Hard Rain
by writerfan2013
Summary: After the Fall. Sherlock and John are apart, but each encounter the same mysterious organization.Sherlock has a mystery to solve; John is nder attack. Friendship, drama, love and Sherlock masquerading as not-Sherlock. Chapter 32, the end. I wrote this a long time ago, then read it again this week and thought, it's fine, why were you hesitating? Hope you agree. -Sef
1. Sherlock, January

_Brecon beacons, grey dawn light, heavy drizzle, Gore-tex canvas flapping erratically in the wind. A small cooking fire and a half made rabbit trap. Apart from camp noises and the birds, silence._

They call it living rough, although I never saw any inherent smoothness in civilisation until I left it. But now, here, I have become aware of how city dwellers exist in a bubble of soft illusions about food, light, fuel, weather.

Food appears, in packets. Heat radiates from the walls or floors at the touch of a plastic switch. Light emanates from bulbs and screens, controlled by more plastic switches connected to an invisible power supply in ways most people have never considered.

Weather barely exists in London. Inside is always a step away and seasons are something indicated by the displays in card shops.

My life now is different. I am camping, bivouacing to be exact, and my connection to the planet has never been deeper or more intense. Temperature or humidity changes affect me immediately and personally. I must consider each day where I will get food and whether it justifies the expenditure of money and contact with other people. I hunt, although this poses difficult legal questions should I be observed setting traps.

I am different, here. I sleep little, and avoid attachment to any one camp location. I have cut my hair. I wear tough, resistant clothes and I am unshaven. These are necessities. I am remote, geographically and socially. I have no networks, and I am not building any new ones, not yet.

My only connection with the world I once inhabited is through my phone, and this I must use sparingly as obviously I am without electricity much of the time.

I do not think about the past. This is important. All scenarios were considered, and this one was selected. The others must be cast aside.

I cannot allow memories or regrets into this life, here on the hills, else it might impair my judgement and place me and others in danger.

Perhaps, in phase two, there will be leisure to look back, but for now I focus on transforming, becoming the person I must now be, and cutting all ties, mental or emotional, to what went before.

I don't say it causes me no pain. But pain, like hunger and cold and the piercing rain, is something I knew too little of, before, and did not understand how to overcome. Here, I must learn all this.

This is the long game, now. I only wish I had been able - I only wish John could have joined me in it.

xxxx

Author's note: Any feedback would be much appreciated. This story about Sherlock changing and growing might have several points of view ie his and John's and maybe another's too. Any directional suggestions would be great, thanks!


	2. John, May

_...Where have you been, my blue eyed son? Where have you been, my darling young one?..._

The thump and twang of Bryan Ferry's Dylan cover filled the clinic. John drew a breath, let it out slowly.

Jamila had leant on the volume again, something she tended to do when the waiting room got too crazy, forgetting that the music penetrated the consulting rooms as well.

"Excuse me a moment," John said to the girl on the bed. "Sorry about this."

He was not sure why was bothering to apologise because the girl was, frankly, out of it. But courtesy counted for a lot in this rough world, and it was one small thing he could control.

He opened the consulting room door and shouted across the fluorescent lit waiting area. Jamila! Volume!

Jamila was locking foreheads with a girl in post punk splendour: studded everything and a face full of metal. "I. Ain't. Interested. In. The. Doctor," this person enunciated into Jamila's face. "Just. Give. Me. Them. Pills."

John moved to place his body between the punk girl and the counter, blocking her access to Jamila." What's the problem," he asked briskly, looking at the girl but talking to Jamila.

"She won't be examined. Wants to be prescribed anyway." Jamila scowled at the girl. For a charitable volunteer she was a remarkably grumpy and stubborn woman, something which came in handy during the chaos of these midnight street clinics.

"Ok, what's the drug?" John asked. Behind the girl the other clients differed and twitched and peowled around, waiting their turn. This girl had queue jumped.

"The Pill," said the punk girl.

"Which pill?" The clinic had limited powers to distribute methodone and other addiction controlling substances.

"You stupid? _The_ pill."

John blinked. "Right. Ok, come in."

"Your other patient," Jamila said sharply, reminding him.

John glanced at his receptionist with a wry smile. "Much as I cherish the professional outfit we run here, in this case, my other patient wouldn't know if we landed a Harrier next to the bed."

Nonetheless he preceded the punk girl into the room and pulled the curtains briskly round the occupied bed. "Ok, contraceptive pill," he said. "Name please."

"They said I wouldn't have to."

"They said wrong. Name please."

"Crash."

He wrote it down. "Any headaches, bleeding, prior pregnancies or are you pregnant at the moment?"

Crash clamped her mouth shut.

John sighed. "Yes or No will do," he said.

Behind the curtain, the girl moaned in her stupor.

"No," said Crash. She was looking around the room, registering every drawer, cupboard, bag. Looking for weak points, things to steal. She missed nothing. It reminded John of Sherlock.

"I need to take your blood pressure," John said, taking down the cuff.

Crash didn't like it, but submitted. There was a silence, then: "I ain't stupid," she said. "I know you're tracking me. But I'm desperate, right, and I just decided I don't care."

"Tracking you," John repeated steadily, watching the pressure monitor. "What?"

"Don't give me that. These clinics are just a front for the Hands."

He looked up. And for the first time, she seemed to see him.

"You're new, ain't you?"

"Not so new," John said mildly. "What do you mean, the Hands?"

But she had snapped shut like the doors on a District line train. John had seen it so many times. They found it hard to trust you. Addicts and dependents, the homeless and the jobless.

There was a rustle from the concealed bed.

John checked Crash over and then prescribed the pill. There was no middle man here - the clinic was doctor and nurse and pharmacist all in one. John kept the heavy stuff and Jamila doled out the painkillers and condoms." Collect from reception," John told Crash." And we're not tracking you, by the way. We just record your details for our performance reports."

Crash paused at the door. She gave him, for a girl of perhaps, nineteen, an astonishingly pitying stare. "You haven't heard of the Empty Hands. Right. That just means they haven't heard of you, yet."

She gave her spiked blonde hair a shake, rattling every bit of metal on her, and left.

John stared. Then turned to see the comatose girl standing, swaying by the bed.

She gazed at him with eyes the colour of river fog, and then threw up all over his floor.

John leapt back. "Jamila! Mop and bio waste kit!"

It was shaping up to be one of those nights.


	3. Sherlock, Wales, January

When you begin to lose your human scent, the prey become less wary of you. Clothes, hair, shoes, skin, all must be without the taint of anything manmade.

In the world of crime, the reverse is true. Criminals go out of their way to appear as human as possible. Gets people off their guard.

Of course I generalize. Conmen need to appear warm and relatable. The hard men channel their brutish, animal side. And the really dangerous people, thes others instinctively shrink from... are the least human and the least concerned to appear so.

Donovan, and others, placed me in this category. How Donovan would gasp to see me now, naked in a stream, rubbing mud on, rubbing mud off.

The water up on this hillside runs fast and cold, near freezing. But I must scrub away the last traces of the city, try to become an animal... that I may disappear into the wilderness.

I thought this would be a tiresome void for my mind, this period of waiting and change. But in fact I am thinking more than ever. Mere survival occupies my body, but my brain has become free.

I am a predator out here and the prey do not judge me. I lead an animal life, keeping low during daylight, roaming during the half-light hours. I cannot be hurt any more than has already happened, and so I recall my old life without restraint.

Tears fall, sometimes. But animals are not shamed by their grieving. and neither am I.

xxxx

Today I saw a strange thing. I have considered it over and over, and I think it must mean a visit to the nearest house, just briefly. It has been long enough, I think. I am physically unrecognizable. I am mentally in check.

I saw a dead rabbit. Not one in my trap, nor one killed by the foxes. Just dead. It did not appear to be of old age, either, although who has ever seen an elderly wild rabbit?

It was simply... dead.

I examined it closely, without touching it. I confess it scared me. These animals have been a primary food source for me, supplemented only by my cache of MREs and vitamins. An unexplained death in the population might mean disease, might mean communicable disease.

The rabbit bore a scar, a tiny one, on its haunch. Not a ring or tag, as if it were part if some wildlife welfare project... a scar, as if it had been operated on, with the greatest delicacy and precision.

It made me think of John and the careful. measured way he did everything. This was the work of someone with hands as steady as his.

But whose hands?


	4. 4: John, May

The streets were growing light as John limped home. He watched the orange sodium streetlights blink off one by one as the daylight reached them. Another grey London dawn. Another morning asleep. Another afternoon of workless time to fill.

He had taken to timing his arrival back at Baker Street so as to miss Priya leaving for work. His new flatmate was pleasant enough from what he'd seen of her -another doctor like him, though he did not even know her specialism - but he avoided contact where possible. He'd given her his room, and moved into Sherlock's. If Mrs Hudson thought it was weird, she had never commented.

John could only explain it to himself as some kind of memory preservation thing, that it was helping him through the grieving process. As if anything could.

As it was, he'd simply moved enough of Sherlock's things aside to make room for his own, and started sleeping in Sherlock's bed. Sherlock liked high thread count Egyptian cotton sheets, and after a couple of nights between them, so did John.

He reached Baker Street. So close to the Euston Road, it was never completely quiet, and at this time of morning the traffic going past the end was already at a roar. People were out, commuting into work or, like John, gently coming home.

A youth was walking towards him, head down, hands in pockets and hood pulled up. John moved aside to let him pass, but the boy swerved and aimed straight for John. As they collided John saw the weapon.

He cried out reflexively and grappled the kid. The boy drew something from his jacket pocket and John saw that it was not a blade at all but a pen, thick barelled like a marker pen. He wrinkled his face in bewilderment - mugged with a Sharpie - and that was when his attacker slashed at him with it.

John ducked back and went for the throat hold which would bring the kid to his knees. But the boy was stringy and quick, and wrestled out of John's grip. He sprinted away, leaving John winded, but not before John saw a flash of silver grey eyes.

John straightened up, checking for injuries. Nothing. A blue line across the back of his left hand where the kid had lashed out with the pen.

John's heart was pounding. He strode towards 221B, feeling the blood in his veins. As bizarre and unpleasant as the attack had been, he found he was glad of it. It had woken him up.

"Something for the blog at last, Mrs Hudson," he said, meeting her on the stairs.

"That's nice dear," she said. "You all right? You look a bit washed out."

"Night shifts," John said, bounding past. "I'm fine."

He made for his laptop and scratched his hand, which was starting to itch. He had two things to blog about, he realised: the market pen mugging, might be good for a bit of humour, and the odd warning from that punk girl at the night clinic. He couldn't even remember what she'd said except it was about hands.

"Heigh ho." He rubbed his jaw, called up the blog, and began to type.


	5. 5: Sherlock, Wales, February

I am gradually upgrading myself. A week ago I was naked in a ditch, and now here I am under a lukewarm shower in an uninsulated Welsh bunkhouse. It's a pity that the students I am sharing it with are so exuberantly promiscuous or I might stay. But further luxuries beckon.

If I can understand the rabbit data swiftly, by this time next week I might be in a B and B.

The mark, the scar on the dead animal was so bizarre that I had to get online to try to find its cause. No signal on the hills, of course, so I retrieved a set of walking clothes from one of my caches and hiked to the nearest farm, and in my best Welsh begged them for a charge of my phone. While I was there the old farmer let me use his broadband connection. He also very obligingly took a long time bringing me a cup of tea, and then another long time fetching the sugar I'd omitted to mention.

Arthritis, you see. It slows you right down with even the simplest tasks, leaving your grateful visitor plenty of opportunity to search the internet for clues.

And...nothing. I got nothing. Cut off as I have been, my networks destroyed, information was impossible to get accurately or even quickly. This was what it must be like for most people, I realised - stumbling about typing words into Google, hoping it will produce the answer.

I ended up using one of my alter egos to enquire of a contact at a pharmaceutical firm, famed for their relentless animal testing programme, if he knew of this kind of surgery on a wild animal.

And as I spoke to him, it got interesting. He started out fine, a bit slow on the uptake, but then... He became cagey, as if someone had just walked into the room and was staring over his shoulder. I did not press him - my alter ego is a self effacing research student - but managed to persuade him to promise lab time should I ever be down on the windswept eastern tip of Kent.

Meanwhile I need to collect further examples and preserve them.

It seems I will be based in this area for a short while. But at least if I arrive back in the evenings loaded with semi-autopsied dead rabbit, it might deter some of the keener of my fellow bunkhousers.

I must move, out of the shower, although the warm water over my body is bliss after weeks of cold and dirt. My skin is clean and sweet scented again at last... But I cannot linger here. There is work to do , and my turn is almost up. The forfeit for outstaying you shower slot is very simple: the next person gets in with you.

I know for a fact that these girls aren't giving me the full ten minutes. But I removed my watch along with everything else, so I can't prove it.

The latest threat, or promise, is that if I outstay this time, they will all get in with me. Obviously the modesty aspect does not bother me. But I need to maintain focus.

Rabbits. I need to think about experimental rabbits.


	6. 6: John, London, May

The laptop was warm like a hot water bottle, wrapped in a couple of layers of white sheet and humming gently to itself. John leaned his cheek against its smooth back and then opened his eyes. What time was it?

He sat up and unwound the laptop. It was a fire hazard, sleeping with it in the bed. Had he really fallen asleep hugging it like a teddy bear? He swung his legs out of bed, rubbing the back of his hand, which still itched. The spring sun was angling in through the tall window. It was afternoon... late afternoon. Hours before he had to be at the clinic tending to today's swirl of injuries, addictions and overdoses. Maybe he would go for a walk after breakfast/tea.

He had found it hard to turn his day upside down for this night shift business. And it played havoc with sleep and wake patterns. But it kept him out of the way of the paparazzi, which had been a blessing these last months. The press interest in all things Sherlock had taken a long time to die down.

Really, Sherlock was the new Princess Diana for certain segments of the media. If they had a slow news day - bring on the Fake Sherlock Mystery.

People popped up in the pages of these rags, on both sides of the story. Lots of people called Sherlock a fraud and backed up Moriarty's cleverly constructed story. John noted that these were often the cases which Sherlock had turned down.

But, gratifyingly, lots of people described how Sherlock had helped them, fixed them, saved them.

Mrs Hudson said he shouldn't read these stories, but John liked knowing that there were plenty of others out there who believed in Sherlock. Who admired him and refused to accept that he was just a construct.

It was comforting.

And there was even an element of the public - a quiet, but determined element - which refused to believe Sherlock was dead at all.

That was harder to deal with. John rationed himself on reading those ones. They were almost entirely online, hidden away in parts of the internet where conspiracy theorists and crop circle creators hung out. John knew that most of these people were deluded, crackpots, fantasists... longing to believe that Sherlock was still out there somewhere, that he had faked his own death to resolve the Moriarty problem, that he was still, somehow, pursuing some great and secret plan.

Crackpots and fantasists ... just like John.

He limited his time on those ones. like an addict weaning off his drug... But he found himself drawn back. In weaker moments, he had posted a few anonymous comments himself. There were so many theories as to how Sherlock had done it. Most were too wacky to consider - an army of homeless people swooping in to switch bodies before the ambulance arrived - but some... some had John thinking. None of the ideas seemed to fit Sherlock's fall -but so many things were possible. And as long as it was possible -

He knew that this was not helping him to move on. But honestly, where was he supposed to be moving on to?

* * *

John's phone beeped, and beeped again as he sat in a greasy spoon in Spitalifields eating a squaddie's breakfast of eggs, bacon, tomatoes, sausages, black pudding and fried bread... enough for the front line, enough to keep you going through a night shift. Eating here meant a delayed breakfast -as it was across the other side of town from Baker Street - but a very short commute to work as the clinic was in a side street a stone's throw away.

John worked through the pile of food, keeping an eye on the other customers, ignoring the phone. But when it beeped four times in four seconds he lay down his knife.

The blog, dormant for so long, was in a blizzard of comments. John blinked. People telling him that Empty Hands was a martial arts philosophy. People telling him the weird objects they'd been attacked with (not really breakfast reading, those ones).

But mostly it was people telling him they were glad he was back.

He wrapped his hand round the plain white mug of tea and squeezed. It was real, the mug and the steamed up windows of the cafe and the grubby old blokes in the corner defying the area's gentrification and the new espresso machine next to the dented old urn, all real.

And people were real, and they were saying that they'd missed his blog.

He read the new posts again. Yes, they all mentioned Sherlock, of course. But they were pleased to see new material from him too, John Watson.

He knew that it was his link to Sherlock which kept people interested, but still. It seemed he'd brightened a few days.

He posted a brief thanks and stood. Time for work.

The phone beeped once more as he marched along Spitalfields and into the covered market.

The place had been extensively refurbished in recent years and John liked to walk through it now on his way to work.

In one corner, beneath the bright glass of the refurbished cast iron Victorian market, was a fantastical clock sculpture, a mechanical hotchpotch of gears and buckets and cogs, some parts rusted, some parts burnished, all of it weird and clanking and uplifting. It always made John smile, to see this strange metal beast surrounded by upmarket eateries and organic craft stalls. It had a little protective fence around it as if to say, normal life ends here: do not cross the line into this world of levers and pulleys and connections you do not understand.

The market was winding down for the night and there were not many stall holders around. No-one was near the clock as John checked the latest blog comment.

Which was just as well, John reflected as he leant on the fence around the clock. Because he wouldn't want people seeing him floored, absolutely floored, by a stupid blog comment.

It was nothing. It was just a throwaway comment from someone with a suggestive username. It meant nothing, and yet John was leaning in the fence, sucking in precious breath, and concentrating on remaining upright.

At last you're back, read the message. Don't touch the mark made by the pen. From: ItsMe.

Above John's head, the mechanical sculpture whirred into life with a noise like an ancient photocopier. The metal planets swung round in complicated patterns, and John stood still, breathing slowly, beneath them.


	7. 7: Sherlock, February

My eyes are closed but I am awake and it is morning. I focus on sensation, without sight.

Smell first, that most evocative of powers, how we store and tag our most important memories. Smell allows to to access thirty year old emotion, allows you to relive key moments simply by inhaling. I can identify many people by their scent. Mycroft and that overpowering Trumper shaving preparation. Molly and the mortuary cleanser, no matter what fragrance she lathers over the top. John's high street aftershave, and under it, John himself. I would recognise in a heartbeat blindfold any item of clothing once worn by John.

Scents here: female, rich, intimate, and multitudinous. Unsurprising.

Touch: many bare arms and legs cast warmly across my body. Texture of skin, I could pinpoint who was who by the fine hairs on the arms, not that I will bother. When I need to move, I will have to wake everyone.

The sounds here are of birdsong as chaffinch, wren and dunnock go about their morning hunt. And the sound of five girls' contented breathing.


	8. Chapter 8: Sherlock, February

A long, steep footpath across three fields, down to the single shop which is petrol station, supermarket and Post Office all in one. The hills stand out sharply in the sunshine today, with snow bright on the peaks. It is winter still, but not for long. I am glad. Winter has been hard and I am ready for spring.

I am expecting the lab results today. My contact at the animal research lab left a message on my new, anonymous phone to say that he was done and that he no longer owed me any favours and goodbye.

I breathe the clean Welsh air and think through the possible reasons for operating in wild rabbits. None of them are good. I watch a lapwing tumble and twist above the rough grass and think instead about the mark we all leave in the world even after we are, supposedly, gone.

Unfortunately I am not alone for my jaunt to the shop. I am trying to tune my body into the season and my mind into the mystery of the dead rabbits but I must keep ignoring the presence of my fellow bunkhouse dweller, whose name is Cerys.

Now I recall that it has been she who accompanied me to the shop the last time. And the time before. She helped me parcel up the rabbit box and waited with me for the courier to Kent.

It is always her.

Drat.

And she is talking.

"I thought I did before, but now I know I really do," she is saying. "And you. Well, you are amazing. That was amazing. I don't even know how you did that."

I make the mistake of responding. A courtesy thing. John was always on about it and in fact it has made this second life rather easier when interaction with others has been required. "Did what?"

"You know. That."

She is euphemising.

"I hardly had to do anything," I remark as we climb the stone stile out of the field and onto the road.

"Oh but you did. Listen, John -"

I picture him vividly for a second: standing straight beside our kitchen table, leaning hard on it with one hand, looking down at the newspapers he has just fetched for us.

Then I recall that I have told people here that my name is John. It sounds wrong on her lips. Also, it was sentimental of me, and potentially dangerous. I won't do it again.

"John, I'm trying to tell you-"

She runs in front of me, grabs my arms and stops me. Looks earnestly up into my face.

"I love you."

"No you don't," I tell her, removing her hands. "You don't know anything about it."

She gasps as I start walking again. "So what was all... all that about then?"

At last, a question with a straightforward answer.

"It was the quickest and simplest way to resolve the situation," I say, and leave her standing in the lane.

* * *

I rip open the letter before I have even left the Post Office. It is to the point: the analysis I requested and my contact's conclusions.

I stand by the red pillar box outside the shop and read, the brisk wind testing at the pages.

"The rabbits were not sick. Nor were they being tracked. They were undergoing gene therapy for myxamatosis, and it had failed."

I frown. None of that makes sense. If they weren't sick why do gene therapy? But there is more.

"This is part of a project to eliminate this dangerous disease for good. A well respected company is undertaking this work and they do not appreciate interference from you. They do not believe that it has. as you say, impacted your own research project. Also, my supervisor rang your tutor at Cambridge and he was very surprised to learn about the problems with your project. Especially as it, and you, do not exist."

Damn.

"Stay out of other people's business. This firm has invested serious effort in their research and when they found out about your enquiries they were very unhappy. Leave this alone, it is none of your concern."

I ponder this as I begin the climb back to the bunkhouse.

Animals, in the wild, being experimented upon. This in itself merits further investigation as it violates three explicit and several other implied laws. Gene therapy - an area I know little about. And a warning to keep my nose out.

"Or what?" I say aloud, and find I am smiling. This is, after all, the breakthrough I have been waiting for, the sign that the old criminal network is not dead like Moriarty, but alive and stronger than ever. They reach out to the Welsh hills and they threaten a nobody researcher who takes an interest in their dirty business.

I have found them out, and they are dangerous. John would love this.

It is time to leave the bunkhouse and continue my entry into the world. My next alias awaits.

I will pack immediately.

I can see as soon as I reach the top field, where the bunkhouse is built against the side of the hill, that packing will not be necessary.

Cerys has run back and told the other girls what I said. And it seems they are less than impressed, because my pack, tent and washing has been dumped outside the determinedly closed bunkhouse door.

Well, that makes things rather easy. I have never been good at goodbyes.


	9. Chapter 9: John, May

John washed his hands and turned back to his patient. saying, You're good to go... but the man had gone. John looked at his hands - shrivelled and pink, a darker mark still where the pen had drawn on him during the not-mugging - and realised that he had been standing with his hands under the tap for a while. The patient had presumably given up.

John sighed. The blog comment had got to him. His concentration was shot.

Time for a restorative cuppa.

John stuck his head round the consulting room door and saw an empty waiting room. Jamila was reading a trashy real life stories mag. As John approached, she lay it down and he saw a two inch high title above a lurid overexposed photo: Ex turned me into a MUTANT!

"Slow night?" John asked.

Jamila huffed. "It just dried up about an hour ago. Maybe that club's not open tonight." A nightclub with a late licence provided many of their more distressed, and drunk, walk-ins.

"Fine with me," said John. He rubbed his hands. "I'll get the kettle on."

"The milk's on the back doorstep."

The clinic had several fridges, none of which were for the storage of the staff's milk, sandwiches or chocolate. Milk was kept on the step outside in the winter. Food had to take its chances.

John gathered the mugs. "Right-ho."

Outside there was frost in the air, despite repeated promises from the weather men that spring was fully upon the capital. John shivered, but the air, though cold, was fresh. He stood a moment, trying fruitlessly to see the stars in London's purple sky. Orange from streetlights stained the edges of the view overhead, and the sharp spring stars were invisible.

To his left, a noise. Feet hitting the ground. He turned to see who had jumped the clinic's fence, and was grabbed from behind, a gloved hand over his mouth, wiry arms pinning his own to his sides.

John kicked out but the hand covered his mouth and nose, applying pressure.

"You don't need to live, " said a voice in a thick London accent. "You just need to come with us. Your choice how."

John thought of Jamila, alone in the night clinic. He stopped struggling.

The man held him still and a second man grabbed his legs. They barged out through the back gate carrying John like a rolled up carpet between them. So much for security, John thought, eyeing his captors and calculating his chances against them.

Whatever he had thought those chances would be, they lessened sharply as he saw the white van parked in the street behind the clinic, a balaclava-ed man at the wheel, the van's engine running.

"In the back," grunted the one of John's captors holding his arms.

The back doors of the van opened. A smaller masked figure - girl, John thought, and frightened, from the way  
she fumbled the doors - moved aside to make room.

John landed on the van's wooden floor next to the girl, a white insulated storage box, and a machete.

The heavies got into the front with the driver.

There followed a journey, with John now bound with cable ties on his ankles and, interestingly, high up his wrists. He tried to count the turns they made, but quickly lost track.

"We're here," said the girl to John as the van came to a halt. "This. Is. Not. Your. Lucky. Day."

The back doors opened as the engine died away. John was manhandled out.

They were on a large flat wasteland, the River Thames close by from the dampness and the smell of mud, the navigation lights on the Thames Barrier glinting in the darkness off to John's left. That was all he could get before he was forced to his knees on the ground.

The masked girl hovered near the van as the driver brought round the medical box. John realised that the box was just about head sized.

Right. Any special instructions for this one?" asked one of the men who had kidnapped John.

"Nope. Just get the sample."

"Right."

Rough hands held John's neck down. He didn't close his eyes. Whatever was ahead, he would see it. And, if there was some existence beyond this life, then he would see Sherlock there.

The girl was shuffling from foot to foot. John's captors gripped his cable tied arms, lifted them away from his body.

The driver lifted the machete.


	10. Chapter 10: John, May

The blade was in the air. John waited, willing his body to relax. Tension increases pain.

The blade above his head and the gravel on the ground in front of his open eyes. _Sherlock._

"Wait."

It was the masked girl who spoke. "He's not sick."

John lifted his head, arms still held out by the accomplice, the man with the machete lowering it in confusion.

"Listen," said the girl in a withering tone, and John recognised her from the clinic the previous evening - the punk girl with the face full of metal. But tonight her voice was clear and authoritative. She was no terrified hanger on. She was in charge of whatever this was. John searched his memory for the name she had given him. "They usually die. We usually run round trying to retrieve the samples from bodies. We waited all day for this one to pop his clogs."

With a tremor John realised that they must have been following him all day. The people in the greasy spoon...

"But he's fine," said the girl pointedly. "Look at his hand," she commanded.

Machete man peered at John's hand. Behind John, the bloke holding his shoulders eased off marginally as he took in the new situation.

John looked too. The pen mark was gone, but the skin where he'd scrubbed it away was pink and tender.

What had been in that marker pen? Nothing good. Something that could be retrieved, later, even from a corpse. Something valuable enough to warrant all this.

John looked around rapidly. Two hands-on men, one with a machete. A girl with a sarcastic tone of voice. No guns that he had seen, though that was no guarantee. Plenty of open space and, crucially, a man whose only job it was to sit in a van with the engine running.

"We'll take him," decided the girl. "Put him back in the van, we're going straight to Echo."

Before the men could begin to wrestle him back into the van, John threw his hands upwards, using their motion to swipe machete man under the throat. The man gasped and clutched his battered windpipe. The machete went flying.

John swung round, up on his feet now, and smashed his forehead into the face of the second man, who had lost concentration as the girl was talking.

He sprawled to the ground and John sprang for the masked girl. "Crash," he said, "I know it's you. Untie me or there'll be trouble."

She jolted in surprise as he spoke her name, and this gave him a second to reach her, loop his arms over her head and pull her against him, his tied wrists hard against her soft throat.

"Get out of the van," he told the masked driver. "Leave the engine on."

Machete man was scrambling to his feet, the other man was reeling but recovering. There was no time.

"Now," said John in a low clear voice, increasing pressure on the girl's windpipe.

"Do it," she gasped to the driver with great frustration. "Get out!"

John held Crash by the neck, threatening the others with his eyes as the driver climbed out of the van."Sit down on the floor over there or I'll kill the girl. I'm a soldier and I will not find it difficult. "

As his kidnappers edged away, John shoved the girl around the van and up into the passenger's seat, keeping hold of her arm with one hand. He scrambled up himself, awkward with bound hands, and pushed her into the driver's seat. "Drive," he ordered. "Don't try anything," he warned her. "I'm having something of a bad day."


	11. Chapter 11: Sherlock, March

Rain on the windscreen. Wipers across and down, across and down. Thick heather all around, shielding my position from the road yet affording me a clear view. Me in the driver's seat. Passenger seat empty.

Series Two Land Rover, forty years old and valuable for its incredible toughness and the fact that it does not require road tax. It does require insurance, however, so I still need to be cautious, which I hate.

My wrists rest on the thin black steering wheel. I look left but the passenger seat is still empty. I should control these impulses - could control them, of course I could - but I have chosen not to. I have chosen honesty, in this, when it is rather too late.

I look forward, through the rain, at the only road off these hills which I have not monitored these last weeks. The last road, before I must begin again or abandon this admittedly desperate idea. I have yet to catch the specimens being taken off the hills, and yet they must be. I am so helpless here alone. But the network - his criminal network, not mine - is out there, and I have found it. I must have.

My network, presently, is me.

Me, and I am too tired to do this effectively.

I could make more coffee. I have an efficient little camp in the back of the car. Another advantage of the Land Rover: plenty of space for the homeless fugitive to establish a few basic comforts.

If I move now, that will be when the van or car with the rabbits goes past, and I will miss it.

Of course my actions do not really influence the likelihood of a vehicle passing on the road. I know this. I am tired.

The passenger seat again. Empty. Of course.

If John were here we could share watches.

A pointless thought but one I keep returning to as I grow wearier.

I pull out my phone. A signal. I check everything while I can.

Everything includes John's blog. Nothing. He has added nothing since I died. One day he will, and then I will know that he has begun to recover. This idea causes me physical pain, in my chest. The pain, its existence as proof of my vulnerable, grieving mind, annoys and frightens me. And every time I hope and hope not to see a new blog entry from John.

If I had been a true friend I would know clearly which to hope for. I do know. But I am afraid to see it, his life going on, and mine, my life with him in it, over.

A vehicle. I put the Land Rover into gear and let off the handbrake, roll forward. Yes. The small van I saw coming onto the hill this morning, two men inside, a local and recent registration number.

I am alone but working.

I let the van go past, then let in the clutch and follow.


	12. Chapter 12 Sherlock, March

**Author's Note: **For those who have wondered, Sherlock and John are on different timelines - Sherlock's longer, stretching over the year or more since his death, John's far shorter, covering a few days in late spring. Thanks for the feedback on this - I learn as I go, and this time, I have learned to be explicit on timelines or really confuse people. So Sherlock is watching John's blog in early spring and as yet there has been nothing from John. Hope it makes sense.

Hope you like the story too!  
-Sef

* * *

Hard Rain 12: Sherlock, March

A medium sized town on the Welsh borders houses a charitable clinic for the destitute. It is a walk in centre where food, medicines, counselling and job seeking advice are offered, free and anonymously, for those unable to access regular services. It is an admirable aim, slightly marred by my theory that they are using their walk in clients as human guinea pigs for the gene therapy which has been tried on the rabbits.

A classic idea, simple and effective. It relies on poor record keeping and worse auditing to remain undiscovered. Backed up, no doubt, by liberal bribes to avoid the kind of questions I am asking now.

Questions such as, why does a charity clinic have biosamples delivered to the back door? Who are all the sober faced people who work upstairs in the brightly lit, high security so called Admin department?

Another good one: why do so many of their clients die? I followed one back to the underpass where he stays and got talking to him and his friends. There has been a flurry of sudden deaths in the homeless community, which in a beautiful irony, has been sending the clients back to the clinic.

He wasn't even ill, I hear more than once.

I research the organisation behind the charity and find layer after layer of fronts, companies owning companies and beneath it all, a holdings group with seemingly limited links back to this clinic -but they are there all the same, those links, because I have found them and documented them - a parent organisation called Echo, or properly, EHCo.

It takes more time to find the unabbreviated name, and when I do, sitting in the Land Rover parked close to this evening's laughably insecure WiFi signal, I stop dead and the hand holding my phone falls to my side.

It is a name I know. An unsolved case from ten years ago and an unpleasant man I couldn't catch. He enjoyed human trafficking, and I'm sure would love this new project for its element of human misery. He also found it amusing that I could not, ultimately, prove his involvement with the illegal movement of people in and out of Britain and Europe.

He is also a good fit for someone to fill the arch-criminal void left by Moriarty.

His organisation was small back then, but it looks like he has gone places since I last encountered him. He's kept the street name of his firm, though. Perhaps he is a traditionalist at heart.

The alias of this man is Crash, and the name of his company is Empty Hands.

* * *

I pace the streets, anonymous, trying to think. Now that I am out of the wild I cannot concentrate. This never bothered me in London. But here, in a town with a pedestrianised High Street and a dreary retail park as its two principal features, I cannot think. Collecting evidence, arranging it, hiding it in my secret places for later retrieval... it seems not like my work, but just a job. Almost a chore. These urban streets are exhausting.

Perhaps I need the wilderness.

...It is not gene therapy. Not for curing anything. For killing? But there are far cheaper ways to achieve this. I could give them a list off the top of my head. Best not, it would be typical of current policing standards to arrest me and not the Hands.

Gene alterations... the stuff of science fiction. Mutants walk the earth, et cetera. The main things I know are that it is being done secretly, and by a man in a sordid relationship with his species. A criminal.

Is it ... DNA disguise? Is it possible to change a person's DNA so that it cannot be recognised?

Interesting idea. My mind fills with possibilities, chief among which is this thought: what would someone like Moriarty do with that power?

Sell it. Sell it to any criminal network able to afford it. Jim, can you fix it for me to disappear?

But it goes wrong. Is not perfect. The rabbits die, people have died. Isn't cancer when DNA has become corrupted? John would know.

DNA in disguise. Carte blanche to commit any crime, and the police databases are useless.

Now that is an interesting idea. But now I am hungry.

* * *

I eat.

In the unpleasantly generic chain pub in the High Street - new horse brasses, gas fire in pretend inglenook, prints of could-be-anywhere in olden times - I order a mixed grill and fall upon it like the Cro-Magnons I evolved from. Though this is probably unfair on the Cro-Magnons, as they were unhindered by social niceties and I am tearing apart the steak with utter impatience and an inadequate fork.

The facts indicate that we should all be vegetarian. It will give the planet, us, a few more years.

But this lamb chop is calling to me and I pick it up in my fingers and bite in. I despise niceties. I am a stranger here and I am in forgettable jeans and a T shirt and I am so hungry.

I never used to need to eat. When I am me I can run for days without needing fuel. But I am not me, I must constantly interrupt my work in order to maintain myself, to get food, eat food, wash, wear clothes. I am aware that I used to let John bear the burden of maintaining me so that I could think. He did it without complaint even though is so tedious and time consuming and _I-am-starving._

I am also, I notice, attracting some attention.

She is blonde, mid forties, self assured. Her clothes are inexpensive and I assume fashionable, but nicely chosen to complement her age rather than to try to disguise it. She has an engagement ring, which she removed and put into her purse before she knew I had seen her watching me.

She waits until I am wiping my chin with the paper napkin before coming to sit opposite me. She arranges herself on the chair so as to draw my attention to her generous hips and bosom.

"You on your own?" she asks without preamble.

"Clearly," I reply. My hunger damped down for the moment, I need to consider the purpose of the DNA transformation. If it is not to disguise DNA, stupid idea, that would almost certainly kill anyone on whom it was tried, then what is it for?

"Do you want to be?" she asks.

"Yes," I say shortly, although my body is saying _No_. Ah. It is one of those days. More maintenance.

"If you fancy a dance later there's a club over the Rose and Crown. It doesn't look much but it plays great music."

As if music is the thing she is offering me.

I make a mouth-only smile. "I don't dance."

"What, you can't dance?"

Never say _Can't_, to me. "I can dance. I don't."

"You should."

* * *

The sound of Blondie's Atomic fills the crowded, sweaty room above the bar at the Rose and Crown: instant memory of one of Mycroft's so called friends being very pleased with having a Sony Walkman to listen to it on.

She is looking at me. "You're here now. Are we going to or what?"

I don't go to clubs, don't dance.

But I must remember: I am not me. Not me could easily have fun, dance around, zone out and let the brain do its work on a different level. And it would all be more plausible if I did.

It could be like meditation, like the walking meditation practised by some Zen followers, where repetitive motion frees the brain from thought and allows the mind simply to be. I don't believe my mind is capable of such utter absence of action, but I could take things down a notch or two and let the ideas settle. All is proceeding as fast as it can. I have time.

And when I tune in to my body I notice, with a flash back to my college years, that I am feeling rather... predatory ... tonight.

She is waiting for me to respond.

I raise my arms, bring my wrists close together above my head, keeping eye contact with her, and move my hips to the rhythm.

I say, "Come on then," in open challenge.

I can dance.

* * *

Later, in the back of the Land Rover, neither of us calling out the right name, I think, DNA, transported. It means something. And then I forget again.


	13. Chapter 13 John, May

North bank of the Thames, May

Hard Rain 13: John

Now Crash was tied up with the remains of the cable ties and John was driving. He would have put her in the back of the van - less trouble - but he wanted to talk to her.

He had a lot of questions.

The van had a nearly full tank of diesel and so John, needing time, headed out to the A13 and drove through Rainham, Dagenham, places he knew only as points beyond the Tube map. He did not know where to go now, and he had to try to recover and think.

The girl - Crash - said nothing. Looked out of the window. Affected boredom. John was not fooled. He had seen her fingers twitching, then being clasped tight together, repressing tension. She was on edge, as well she might be. Whoever she was working for was going to be very pissed off indeed.

"I notice you didn't really struggle," John said after a long silence in which they shared the road with only articulated lorries and tanker trucks. Three am, not much civilian traffic. John suprised himself with this word. They were all civilians. "Not afraid of getting caught."

"Well done." Crash said sarcastically. This appeared to be her default mode. She was very defensive for someone with command of three men. Like she knew she had screwed up.

"Who are you? What is the line on my hand?" The streets were lined with small shops, metal shutters pulled down across their windows, signs in Arabic and Polish.

The girl did not reply. The piercings made her face hard to read - deliberate? It was a Sherlock observation, John thought. Except that he could not deduce the answer.

"Tell me " John said, less aggressively. "As much as I am pretty pissed off with being attacked, I want to find out what your story is."

She looked at him warily. Considered.

"Test," she said.

"On me." This tied in with how they referred to samples earlier. He was a sample, or had been about to become one. A living one, which apparently, in their callous world, was unusual.

She sneered at him, back in full on unpleasant mode. "Doh."

"Right."

His hand gripped the steering wheel. The van was rattly and hollow- sounding, no cargo to give it weight. It rolled all over the place on corners. A part of John thought it would handle a lot better with, say, three masked blokes trussed up in the back. But this had not been practical. "Not just me though. Who else?" How many people had been mutilated or killed for this supposed test?

Crash gave a nasty smile. "Plenty."

Fine. He would let the police deal with the past history - starting, he realised, with his clinic's own patient records. John was meticulous. Every case recorded. And if the muggers were operating nearby, unafraid to attack one of the staff, then it stood to reason that the vulnerable patients represented an even easier target.

Death and accident records, first. Molly Hooper would help him get them. This was not an isolated incident, so it should be possible to find a pattern which would lead them to -

Which would lead him to the criminals. And then, obviously, he would let the police deal with it. "What was in the line that kid drew on my hand?"

But she was staring out of the window with a clenched jaw, and he already knew she was not going to tell him anything.

He pulled over, took his phone out of his jeans. Dialled a number, watching her for any sudden moves. She made none, appeared sullen. "I need to speak to Detective Inspector Lestrade."

"John! Long time no hear. What can I do you for?"

"Greg, hi, yes. I need you to come and arrest someone for me. Charges of kidnap and attempted murder."

"Who's been kidnapped?"

"Me."

* * *

"Bad luck, John."

"What d'you mean?"

It was morning and John was in a small grey police interview room with the striplights hurting his eyes. Lestrade sat down opposite John and grimaced sympathetically.

"Kidnap and attempted murder can cut both ways. This girl's lawyer says you assaulted and threatened her in frint of three witnesses. And then took her forcibly from the scene in a vehicle you stole from them."

"I've told you what happened." John was too tired to make it sound as angry as he felt.

"Yes, and I more or less believe you. But you've got no witnesses backing up your story and she has three. I suggest you don't press charges, to be honest."

"Right." John stood, pushing back his chair.

"Where are you going?"

"Home." ...Just to get his laptop.

Back at Baker Street, John logged into Sherlock's website. He needed to pass a message to ... Sherlock. If that were possible. If he was alive.

Too many ifs. Act as if the decision has already been made, and get on with it.

He logged in with Sherlock's password. Sherlock would be impressed. And irritated. "You're not the only one who can do it," John said aloud as he navigated the site structure. He added a file, not visible to the public. Only someone logging into the site as an admin would see it.

That limited it to Sherlock. Or possibly Mycroft.

My first real case and already I'm asking you for help, he began.

He described everything. Looked at it, shrugged, logged out. It was mid morning already and he was shattered.

He undressed in Sherlock's bedroom, fell into the sheets and closed his eyes. He was about to plunge into sleep when his phone beeped a blog update notification.

He grabbed it.

It was from ItsMe, and it said simply, _On my way._

John clutched the phone to his racing heart, closed his eyes, and hoped, fruitlessly, for sleep.


	14. Chapter 14 Sherlock, April

Sherlock, Welsh borders, April.

I have a job.

This is novel.

My hair is growing back and so with a cheap shirt and polyester trousers I look, I think, pretty average.

I am an Administrative Assistant.

Of course I am also spying on the work of the Empty Hands whilst notionally filing and photocopying.

I don't mind the work, in fact. Except taking phone calls, which I do my best to avoid. I have an irrational fear that one day I will answer the phone and it will be John on the end of the line.

Even I would struggle to maintain my resolve in that case.

The rest is easy. I get a bit of attention as the new boy in the office, but I have let it be known that I have a long term girlfriend who lives far away but to whom I am utterly, religiously devoted. If anyone seems too interested, I begin boring them with the amazing good qualities she possesses. If that doesn't get rid of them I start talking about my hobby, which for this alias I have decided is railway tunnels constructed in the mid nineteenth century.

The Hands, as I think of them, are only lightly touching this clinic. Mostly the staff here in Admin have no contact with the medical and social work staff. Nobody has contact with the biosample deliveries to the lab on the top floor, except Bolton, who is the security specialist, rarely seen, a stoop shouldered, balding man with a thin smile and an office on the Admin floor.

His office door is always closed, and firmly locked at night. So far no attempt to pick it has been successful, and I must be surreptitious as this place has CCTV covering everywhere, even the toilets.

"A bit over the top for an office," I comment to the girl at the next desk, and she shrugs. CCTV is part of life for her.

A true citizen of Mycroft's world.

I have a gammy leg and a note to prove it, meaning that I have to get up and walk around a lot to relieve the pain. I act a bit dim when discovered in parts of the building which are off limits, as if the concept of boundaries is alien to me. John would laugh at that.

As if this does not keep me busy enough. I also have a second job, of sorts. At night I get changed in the Land Rover which is still my base camp, and wander down to the concrete underpass to hang out with my fellow dispossessed.

Our living room is a raw concrete ramp beneath the motorway. Prime spots are near the top where there is the most shelter from the frequent rain, but none of it is level and all of it is uncomfortable and miserable.

I am mostly silent, here, with a sympathetic expression and a willingness to sit compliantly while people tell me all about themselves. I have become known as someone the opposite of a raconteur... what is that? A racontee?

And one day, my waiting and watching at the tough end of the Hands' operation pays off.

xxx

A van arrives at the underpass, and a squad of outreach workers get out. Tonight, they are immunising.

I immediately develop a vocal dislike of needles and begin to back away. I will watch from a distance, thank you very much.

The workers are some of the clinic staff I recognise, plus a supervisor I don't, at first.

The outreach workers move among us with soothing voices and official looking lanyards. We are offered a cup of tea and immunisation.

One of them, a fresh faced girl with a small plastic box, approaches me.

"He's scared of needles," proclaims one of my new friends helpfully on my behalf.

"Don't worry," says the girl with a reassuring pat of my arm. "There's no needles here, see!" She opens the box and shows me a little pile of plastic devices which look like marker pens. "See! Non invasive."

I hesitate as if considering it, whilst actually considering how to steal one of the pens and escape, but then the supervisor comes up to me with a chuckle and says, "This isn't, though," and unceremoniously wrenches up my coat sleeve and sticks me with a sharp object.

I squeal in surprise and genuine alarm. This stuff has killed people. I look down as the fresh faced girl begins bandaging my left bicep before I can get a good look at what they've done.

I recoil and wrench away, my heart pounding. "Let go of me," I shout, bashing at the plastic box and sending the marker pens scattering. I catch one as it falls and as I flail about, get it into my pocket. "Leave me alone!"

The supervisor tries to grab me, growling at the girl, "You've got to be more firm with these people. see? That's why I give you targets to meet."

I elude his grasp, and struggle to get away from here. He doesn't give chase, leaving that to the juniors.

I flee and head across the wasteland towards town and my Land Rover. I am panicking because I have been injected with whatever it is, and because I have recognised him.

It is Crash.

I have been injected.

Oh God.


	15. 15 Sherlock, West Midlands, April

Sherlock, Welsh Borders, April

What would John do? I try to picture him here with me, giving calm instructions, as I prepare to tear off the bandage and look, horrified, at my mutilated arm.

I am in the Land Rover, in the driver's seat, having driven blindly out of town and east, some animal instinct telling me to flee, hide, go where I can never be found. Now I am parked in a farmer's field, somewhere off the A470, hidden from the road behind the dry stone wall of the field. It is raining yet again and making a din on the roof.

John would be telling me to stay calm and keep still so that he could take a proper look. I force myself to remove my fleece and shirt, do not disturb the bandage yet. The shake in my hands runs right through me.

This stuff - genetic alterations - it messes you up. Even if it doesn't kill you, you will never be the same again. And it often kills.

The idea of my body betraying me in this way makes me feel faint. My body must not die, it's got me in it.

I think of John. Imagine him saying, Let's have a look at that then.

Take off the bandage. Bite back horror. Look properly.

There is a tiny plastic disc which Crash inserted beneath my skin. It hurts. The flesh around it is swollen and throbbing in protest.

What is it? A delivery mechanism? I must get it out. But that will hurt too.

John would reach for his medical kit, hold my arm steady with one hand, and tell me not to look. I would ignore him, would have to look. But he is not here and I don't want to have to do this.

Already their poison is in me. I do not know how long it might take to do damage. I wasted time driving this far.

I should go to the nearest hospital.

I should go to the police.

But the me that could do anything useful - call Lestrade, barge into labs insisting on access - is dead and discredited. I am not in a strong position to walk in claiming I have uncovered an organised criminal venture, especially as I do not yet know its purpose.

I must remove the thing, preserve it, and get to some vestige of civilisation so that should it become necessary I can at least call Mycroft. He would bring John, sort out all the police and lab things, bring John.

I am wandering, procrastinating. I take three breaths in and out. I have done this kind of thing before, many times before. There have never been any complaints from the cadavers.

I let out a hysterical laugh and put my hand over my mouth.

Just do it, Sherlock. Be afraid later

No doubt of that.

I pick up my scalpel.

* * *

I am not good at bandages, but at least it is now done. I have the device in a sealed plastic bag, and have cleaned my wounded arm as best I can.

I look in the bag. A small disc. Circuits, so minute I need a magnifier to see them at all. Not a medical implant.

I do not have my catalogues with me, and the internet is only a dream out here, but I have seen this type of disc before.

It is the sort of thing Mycroft likes to leave in my pockets when he thinks I haven't seen. I am always having to remove them from John's clothing, his shoes.

It is a tracking device.

* * *

I drive east, and south, heading for the M40 and the straight line across the country from the Midlands to London. It is late, or rather early, and my body is quaking with the amount of caffeine coursing through it.

This is how the Hands control their experiments in humans. Given the general unreliability of the dispossessed, instead of hoping they will return to the clinic for a check up, just track them. This also makes bodies easier to find.

Somewhere, then, there is a system which monitors the location of each of these trackers. It might hold historic data too. I would have a complete picture of these illegal activities.

I am still missing the main point, however, without which I cannot end my exile and prove myself to be working on the side of the law, not against it.

I still do not know what is in the marker pens. Or what it is meant to do.

I dare not attempt to carry out tests myself. I could contaminate the sample and render any evidence I might find, useless.

No: it is time to begin the process of my return. I must not become excited about this, but continue steadily, working through the stages that must be completed, in the way that I planned.

I snort with laughter, then wince as the movement sends fresh pain through my arm.

Impossible not to become excited. Soon, it will be soon. I will have my life back, will be able to be me again. Think, work, live, say and do all the things I never had the chance to.

I blink, take a breath. It is too early for any of that.

Right now I need help. I need the facilities to test this pen, to uncover the secrets of the tracking device, and find the location of the rest of them.

I need power and money and extreme secrecy. Therefore I need Mycroft.

I stop at Oxford Services, acutely aware that I still have with me the (presumably active) tracker. Even assuming that my behaviour at the homeless immunisation session was not considered suspicious enough to begin looking for me straight away, it is almost tomorrow and routine location checks on all the Hands' test subjects are likely to begin soon.

I dial Mycroft's personal number and wait for it to connect before getting out of the car. I walk towards the Starbucks and hear the tiny hesitation before he says, "Yes?"

"It's me. I am at Oxford Services on the M40 southbound and I have something with me which I need to get rid of."

A brief pause. His mind is working.

"I also need a secure lab and someone with an understanding of genetic mutations."

He is listening. I imagine him like a still ocean into which many words and objects are dropped, sinking swiftly. Some may be brought back to the surface. Others are never seen again, but nothing is lost.

"I am outside the Starbucks," I say finally, and look up at the CCTV cameras. One swivels towards me.

More silence. I hear him take a breath.

"Hello," he says then. "I will send a car for you and your items."

"Not me," I say quickly. "Just the stuff. Although if someone can take a look at a wound that would be helpful."

"As you wish." A pause and I know he is issuing commands, setting wheels in motion.

"Thank you," I say, and realise I am truly grateful, not least for his unshakeable ability not to make a fuss.

"You sound different," he says disapprovingly.

"You don't. Goodbye."

I ring off, and go to buy coffee.

I now have, in effect, two interested parties searching for me. The Hands, who will immediately realise something is amiss given that a homeless person ran off and is now at a service station a hundred mules away and will, soon, apparently wink out of existence as if placed in an utterly secure Government vault.

And Mycroft, who now that he knows I am alive and well, will stop at nothing to keep tabs on me once more.

I realise that half the freedom I have felt these last few months, has been freedom from him. Being a body with an alias, being not me, has given me liberty from his ever present is nearly over.

I must return to Wales and find out what the Hands are trying to achieve. Mycroft's people will do the tests, but I must be on the spot to expose the Hands.

I write instructions for the technicians and watch for the arrival of a discreet car.


	16. John, Baker St, May

John opened his eyes. Noises in the flat. It was late - afternoon, evening, the room was din with just the street glow coming between the curtains - Priya would be back from her work, was it her?

He was already scrambling out of Sherlock's bed, pulling on jeans, a jumper, flicking open the bedside drawer where he kept the gun he was not supposed to have.

Priya did everything silently. Priya could be upstairs all weekend and John would never know. The sound which had woken him was more like...

...a door being kicked in.

Swift and silent he pocketed his phone, preparing the pistol in his hands without needing to think about it. Anything useful or damaging in the bedroom? No. Leave it. Leave now, and intercept whoever it was before they reached Mrs Hudson or Priya.

Sherlock - may or may not have contacted him last night, be alive, and so on and so forth do not think about it now just move Watson and move like you mean it.

John opened the bedroom door, looked round, ducked back inside.

In the low light from the street, two men were in the flat, standing, looking around, getting their bearings.

John felt himself become still. All was ready. Two men, in his home, and he was armed. He took off the safety, breathed in, out, the breathing that allows you to pull the trigger precisely, not even your own heartbeat to throw off your aim.

Then he opened the door and said, "What are you doing in our flat?"

* * *

American, trained, military, still serving, on a mission currently, covered by instructions not to kill unless required.

This much John learned with the first glance at them as he switched on the living room light. Returning his hand to steady his pistol, he said, "Answer me or I will have to start making assumptions."

The senior guy spoke. Greyer hair, thicker body, slower breathing. Obvious. "You have some data belonging to the US government. We want it back."

"I don't have any data. I'm a private citizen - a British citizen - and I'm a former soldier and a doctor. My life in a nutshell. I don't have any data. Who are you?"

Footsteps on the stairs. Priya appeared in a pink towelling dressing gown and was grabbed by the junior guy. Oh great.

"Let her go," said John evenly, pistol still trained on Mr Senior.

"The data," he said, no more fazed by the confrontation than John.

"I don't know what you mean and I'm starting to get quite pissed off," said John. He gave a false smile. "Would you like me to demonstrate?"

He lifted the gun fractionally to include Junior, who had hold of Priya. "I don't like your tie," John said, and made a tiny movement of his left hand.

"Hold it," said Senior. "No one needs to get hurt."

"And yet here you are in my flat of a weekday evening, carrying weapons and threatening me and my flatmate."  
John tilted his head to one side. "Explain now."

"Two guns, two men, one hostage, are you sure," said Senior without moving or breaking eye contact."

"Pretty sure," said John.

Senior sighed, lowered his weapon. "We have reason to believe you are in possession of data illegally obtained from the US government. Give it up and this remains unofficial."

"Quite happy for it to go official," said John, squinting a little as he aimed.

"You were given data two days ago and last night a criminal organization tried to collect. You escaped and came here."

"I live here. Let her go, please."

At a nod Priya was released. She stumbled into the centre of the living room, looking resentful and afraid.

"Thank you," said John. "Priya, call the police. You, Junior, call your commanding officer and tell him the mission was compromised. And you -" gesturing with the pistol at Senior - "you can use the three seconds before my mate the local DI gets here, to tell me what you think I have and why."

Sherlock had only been back - if he was back - half a day, and things were looking up already.


	17. Sherlock, Midlands and Kent, April

**Author's Note:** I am a little hard on Whitstable, as the below is based on my impressions of the town before it (like many other Kentish seaside towns) gentrified. It is now a place with art galleries, a theatre and plenty of locally sourced produce. And no sinister factories as far as I know.

* * *

Sherlock, West Midlands, April

Mycroft's voice, dry and disparaging on the phone in my budget hotel bedroom. "Nothing. We found nothing."

"No." The pen held the answer. It is impossible that Mycroft's minions have not discovered it. I stand by the grey net curtains at the window and look out onto a drably landscaped car park.

"You appear to have been misled, brother dear." He sounds pleased with this idea.

I pace up and down. "Then what is it all for? Such an elaborate operation! If it doesn't do anything then what is the point?"

"Perhaps to keep you busy while the real work gets done." He is smiling.

This gets under my skin, of course. "I don't believe that the world revolves around me," I say stiffly. As if criminal networks would create a giant hoax just to throw me off some other, grown-ups' business. A typical Mycroft taunt, that I am playing at the sidelines while he handles all the really important stuff.

Mycroft chuckles. "You really have changed. But anyway, forget about all this. Those places with no room service, how you must be suffering." I have not told him anything about my current location. He is guessing, or he has people following me. "I will send a car for you and we can work on your... Re-insertion. "

"No. Tell me more about what you found out."

"I can tell you that the device you sent us originates from a specialist secuirty manufacturing firm in Kent. Sending you the details now."

My phone beeps, indicating a new message. Mycroft goes on, "It appears to be run by a man whose credentials are so clean they positively squeak. The name I have is Bolton."

"Thank you," I say.

This is clearly a red herring, a plot to position me where he knows how to find me. But Bolton was the security specialist at the clinic /lab in Wales. Can I ignore it, despite seeming like a Mycroft trap?

"I'll look into it", I say co-operatively. If Mycroft can't tell I'm lying, he's a fool. I don't care.

He makes a new move. "Have you spoken to John Watson yet?"

I say nothing. John's name in Mycroft's mouth is an insult. I will not be manipulated through invocation of John.

"You should," says Mycroft. "He misses you dreadfully."

I press my lips together and remain silent.

"We've all been so worried," says Mycroft.

"It isn't time," I say. "Not yet." I know I sound petulant and uncertain.

"Goodbye," says Mycroft, still smiling.

I want to get into this security place. even though it is clearly what Mycroft expects and wants me to do. Where is it? Kent, north coast. A place once famed for oysters, now mostly known as being one of the poorest areas in the UK, despite being within sixty miles of London.

An ideal place for a holiday.

I will get into Bolton's office. I will find what's in his computer. I will find what the marker pens do.

...But I won't do it the way Mycroft expects, with an ingenious plan, a false identity and acres of brass neck. That is the me he knows. No, for this I will go old school, one last time.

I need time to piece together what is happening. And to become me again.

I must not think yet about what I will say to John.

* * *

Whitstable. A narrow town beside a shingle beach on the southern shore of the Thames Estuary. Behind it, north Kent, a bleak landscape of pylons, tough pale grass and old chalk quarries. Before it, the Thames meeting the Channel, grey and blue and brown. The water absorbs sunlight and its surface appears dull and lifeless. Rusting sea forts rise from the waves, seven miles out, close to the horizon.

The town has many weather-boarded Edwardian houses, a few original fisherman's cottages now struggling as B&Bs, and near the beach, one new warehouse, finished in the silvery pine so beloved of modern architects, and doing a pretty good imitation of Kentish secular style, except for its scale. The place is vast, a factory with a big staff car park and its own road system inside the high, barbed wire fences.

My current alias is as a slightly moody but comfortably off IT contractor who is between contracts and who writes obscure poetry to fill the time. It quite suits me, I think. And I have written a bit of poetry which I might send off to that contest.

My computer geek/ poet finds the outdoors very inspiring, and spends a lot of time crunching along the beach with his binoculars and the wind in his crewcut hair, drinking in the wonders of nature and noting down the registration numbers of vehicles entering and leaving the security systems plant. Now I am close to London I finally have decent, if not actually legitimate, access to the vehicle licensing authority data and can find out who owns those cars.

The name on the gate is bland and generic, but I have heard the punters in the nearest pub calling their employer Echo, and I have picked a couple of specific pockets lately and the wage slips refer to EHCo. Empty Hands for sure.

Talk in Whitstable is of the jobs EHCo has brought here. The general conclusion is that EHCo is secretly a branch of Government. Employees sign strict non disclosure contracts. -And are handsomely paid, judging by the BMWs, Range Rovers and even a couple of Aston Martins in the gated staff car park.

The punters in the pub don't volunteer much, but deductions show that they are IT and systems experts. The in-jokes are techie ones, and the men - it is almost exclusively men - love a good server-down war story.

I mingle, in my identity as the IT contractor/poet, sharing a few war stories of my own about the global infrastructure I have accidentally unplugged in my time. Most of it is not even made up.

My interactions confirm that there is nothing medical about this facility. This is a different kind of operation.

Mycroft has certainly tagged my Land Rover, so I helpfully leave it parked on the street at the wrong end of Whitstable and occasionally visit it, looking secretive. Give his spies something to report back. But I am not sleeping there any more.

I have a new billet, in the untidy spare room of a friendly chap called Jeff who works at EHCo. I met him in the pub and let it be known that I was looking for a place to crash for a month or so while I communed with my Muse.

I have been here at Jeff's for two weeks, wearing out his broadband and pretending to like football, which he watches relentlessly.

Jeff is a Liverpool supporter. He is not from Liverpool, nor has he ever lived there. By this logic, I tell him, I would be a Kuala Lumpur supporter - it makes as much sense.

No, he says seriously, they're not in the Premier League.

This is a topic I have tried hard not to learn anything about, as it is complicated and ever changing and would use up too much valuable space in my mind.

There are a lot of these leagues and a ghastly points based system and no single final winner which would put an end to the exhausting question of which group of men can kick a ball around better than all the other groups of men.

"You're funny," Jeff says affably, clinking beer cans with me. I have noticed that he never calls me mate. Jeff calls everyone mate, but not me.

* * *

More petty theft and midnight inspiration walks, aka bin raiding, has resulted in a small breakthrough, in the form of a memo, marked To Be Shredded.

The weakest link in any security system is always the human being.

This brief document provides the direction I have been looking for. The  
tests have been proceeding well, and are now focused somewhere called Midnight. An initial memory scan reveals too many street names and popular culture references, but I will discover it.

The test details refer not to anything medical, no poison or drug or mutating horror, but to data.

I flash back to the floor of the Land Rover, a struggle among the rubble of my clothes and pans and camping gear, as I tore the underwear from a stranger to satiate my own need and quiet my roaring blood.

She cried out a name, not mine, and I had a thought... DNA. How is it usually transported? Through sex. How the species continues. Sex transmits all the information required to build more humans. All the data.

DNA carries data.

And if you could alter the data it carries...

...then you have an invisible means of smuggling information across any border, any scanning system, to anywhere and anyone you like.

I know what Crash and the Empty Hands are trying to do.

* * *

I am working later that night when Jeff appears in the doorway to my room and sees me with my head bent over my netbook, reading newspapers online and trying to identify recent security breaches of a scale and importance which would justify the enormous investment by the Empty Hands Co. American data is favourite : they have so many enemies these days.

I have been concentrating for hours and my neck and shoulders ache.

"So much passion," says Jeff. I raise my head. DNA strings swim before my eyes. I switch screens to display some of my poetry.

Gradually I focus on him and realise that he is finally openly flirting with me. "My work is my life," I say, and am struck immediately by the bare truth of this. My old life had people but now there is just me and the work. I never used to think like this. Is it weakness?

Only a second has passed since I spoke and Jeff says, "Seems a shame to waste it all on work."

"It's not a waste," I say automatically.

"The job don't love you back," he says. "And you - there's so much in you, how could any job use up all of that?"

I open my lips to begin to try to explain... and realise that if I do, I will lose an opportunity. Mycroft is close by, ready to snap shut the jaws of surveillance on my every move. I admit to myself that my not-me life has opened up places within me which I have kept carefully hidden for a long time. I cannot bear Mycroft to know this about me, to be certain.

I close the netbook, and look Jeff full in the eyes.

Jeff blinks as I turn up the intensity and go for what the bunkhouse girls would call a proper smoulder.

Jeff looks at me and, gratifyingly, wobbles a little. I smile. And then notice that it is a genuine smile.

Yes, what not-me needs now is, not a break, obviously, I never stop, how do people do that, simply switch off and hang with their mouths open and their higher functions on standby, but yes, perhaps, a switch to an alternate skillset for a while, it would do me good and even help me overall, although I must be careful to avoid losing my accommodation this time and maintain a level of plausible human involvement, another area which will be good practice for me as frankly it has become obvious that I find this the hardest part of being in the world without John, the pretending not to be myself and finding how much people mind when I stop. Yes, this is my decision.

Jeff takes a deep breath and I move, rising and stepping to him and sliding my hand to the back of his neck and kissing him on the mouth, all in one fluid motion which would knock him from his feet were it not for my steadying arms.

He is warm and strong and kisses me back with some skill. He wants to go to bed with me, of course, and I find that the appeal of this has increased significantly with my lips on his and my fingers in his soft short hair. Also, he runs the security detail at the Hands facility, and I must be obliging. It will be an opportunity to use some technique. Perhaps a last opportunity.

We break apart and Jeff says appreciatively, "I knew it." His fingers give a tiny tug at the short hair at the nape of my neck. "Passion."

"You have no idea", I say, and kiss him again.


	18. John, London, May

The flat was crowded with the four of them standing tense in the living room, but no-one was backing down. John stood steady with his weapon aimed at Senior. Priya was behind him, quivering but trying to keep it together.

"Talk," said John.

Senior gave a small eye twitch of What the hell. "Our agent heard you talking to one of a group of people we've been tracking for some time," he said. "One of their generals. Young woman goes by the name they all have at the top level - Crash."

John thought back. The girl in the bed, the comatose girl. She was an agent of whoever these people worked for? Really? Crash being some kind of commander, that made sense. She had the control in her team. "Your agent threw up on me," he said.

"She's a perfectionist. Realised you were new, followed you home. Saw you being intercepted in the street."

"Being mugged," said John. "What's the name of this organisation then?"

Senior looked at him curiously. "Never said it had a name. Or was an organisation."

"I heard it was called Empty Hands," said John. "What does that mean? Who are they?"

Senior shrugged. "So what did they give you?"

"They didn't give me anything," said John.

Doorbell, loudly. Then footsteps pounding up the stairs. Lestrade burst in.

"Ok, guns away everyone, what's going on here?"

"These men broke in and are demanding I give them something I haven't got," said John.

There was a flurry of ID badge flashing. Everyone nodded at everyone else and Greg made a phone call while watching John and the two Americans.

"Gotta let then go, John," he said as he closed his phone. John rolled his eyes.

"Sorry about the trouble," said Senior. "You sure you don't have anything for us?"

"I would know if they had given me something," said John. "I'm not stupid and I would know."

The men left and Priya gave a gasp that turned into a sob. John put his arm round her.

Lestrade put his phone away, looked around at the flat. Turned to John. "What the bleeding hell's going on here then? I've just been told to stand down by the highest powers. Who did not appreciate being woken up to have to tell me."

"I don't know," John says, "but did your lab find anything in that mark on my arm?"

"Not yet, but it could take them weeks." He grimaced. "I know that's not what you want to hear, but nobody died and there are no charges being brought. You're pretty far diown the priority list."

"Great."

"I'm going to place some officers outside," said Greg. "In case they come back."

"Don't bother," said John. "They won't try this again." No, he thought, it would be something else.

He wanted to say, this is something to do with Sherlock, but didn't.

Greg shook his hand. "You've had a rough day or two. Sorry."

People did that nowadays, John thought. Gave him over the top support for minor things. It was as if they could see the hurt bleeding out of him about the big thing, but couldn't say anything. So they just patted his shoulder, shook his hand said extra nice things.

"Cheers."

When Greg had gone, Priya went to make tea. She fiddled with the cups and then said, "You can use my lab if you want. It's medical testing you need, yes?"

"What?"

"You've got something you need checking. Use my lab. It has every scanner currently available and a few which aren't, yet. Prototype equipment, state of the art. That's my job. I have all the latest everything for medical analysis."

John stared at her. He had never asked her what her specialism was.

Priya smiled shyly. She poured boiling water onto teabags and said, "What do you need testing?"

"My hand," said John.


	19. Sherlock, Whitstable, May

Sherlock, Whitstable, May  
I slip from Jeff's house and head to the plant. It is early Sunday morning, raining, and the town is silent and deserted. I feel heavy and sluggish – it has been an intense evening and sex always does this to me. My body is telling me I am too tired to be doing this but now is the first available time and there won't be a better one if I wait.

I walk briskly and blink away the rain which throws salt from the estuary into my face. I have to enter the EHCo plant, get evidence, preferably documentary and photographic, of whatever is going into the plastic pens, basically anything which proves that all this has not been for nothing, and get out. Then return the stolen keyfob and uniform to Jeff.

I am not obliged to do this last, of course: if he gets into trouble it is his fault for letting a stranger into his bedroom. But it will be more confusing to the Hands if there is no obvious way I broke in.

My plan is basic - it does not need to be anything else - and it works. I enter the plant through the staff gate, dressed as a security worker and using Jeff's keyfob, go into th elaborately designed building which is clearly the admin and lab area and prowl around.

There is evidence. Most interestingly, a document on Bolton's secretary's computer which details a successful test on a human subject. The subject displayed no adverse reactions to treatment, says the document , and survived the first twenty four hours with no adverse reactions or any outward signs even that treatment had been received.

Next step: find what was in the marker pen, the so called dose.

I am in the main administrative office area of the plant, cursing their surprisingly efficient clean desk policy and looking for a way to access Bolton's computer, when I glance through a glass divider into the next open plan area and see him.

Bolton sees me too.

I look round, establish three points of exit, plus the window makes four. Least expected is the window and I am only on the first floor but the window may be - probably is - locked. My housebreaking toolkit would probably get me through but would take time. Reject that. Furthest point from Bolton and nearest exit is the door into a corridor from which I do not know the route to the that. Next is a fire exit plus alarm which would set off the entire building and bring my supposed colleagues, the people in the uniforms which match mine but who actually work here, at a run. Reject that.

Therefore my chosen exit is the one where Bolton is standing right now gaping at me and reaching for his phone.

I charge, yelling, and bring him to the carpet. Get his phone off him. Smash it on the floor, pin him down with my favourite incapacitating hold and give his head a quick tap on the floor as well to disorient him. Don't want to get done for assault so leave it at that.

He has recognised me but does not know where from. Good, minimise his chances to observe me.

I turn my face away and manoeuvre behind him so he cannot look at me as I drag him to a chair beside the desk where I was rifling through their documents. "What's in the marker pens?" I ask, relatively politely, with just a yank on his neck to remind him to reply quickly.

He swears at me and starts making threats, which I tune out. "Log in," I tell him, shoving his wrists towards the keyboard.

"No."

"Yes."

I apply pressure at a key point on his neck and he yelps. "Log in," I repeat, trying to keep my face away from the gaze of the security cameras.

Once logged in I render him unconscious with a slightly clumsy but effective technique - cut off his oxygen supply, the old ones are the best - and lay him under the desk out of sight of the cameras. My body aches from the exertion. I slump in the chair and navigate through their computer system quickly, now with access to all the interesting parts.

Lab details, lab details. There it is. Sample data.

It is encrypted, very sensible, but there is a file which seems to contain details of the samples for use on test subjects. I start to download it to my phone and then see movement in the corridor outside. Security.

Damn. No time now, need to get out of here.

The window it is then.

* * *

I am drenched when I sneak back into Jeff's house. I hide his uniform in my bag – will have to sort it out later – and take a shower before climbing back into bed with him. In theory I have never left.

He wakes as I am sliding the security fob back into his bedside drawer. "What you doing?"

"Have you got any aspirin?" I say blearily. "Got a terrible headache."

He stretches, showing off his body a little. There are thumbnail marks in his shoulders. God, was that me? "In the kitchen," he says. "Second drawer."

I go downstairs and take the opportunity to put a wash on – thoughtfully including his clothes and his uniform... hope it is on the right setting, these are the details I never have time for.

I slide back into bed with him and he reaches for me but I am not in the mood. "Headache's really bad," I say. "What did you do to me," I joke faintly, and he takes this as a compliment and leaves me alone.

I need to get the evidence – and myself – away from here.

No time like the present.

I sit up abruptly and say, "Jeff, I'm sorry, this was a mistake, I can't do this."

"What?"

"This, us, it can't happen."

"What? Why not? What's going on?"

I scramble out of bed and start pulling on clothes. "I'm sorry," I say, "I just can't. I haven't been totally honest with you. There's someone else. I was thinking of him the whole time. I'm sorry."

I am almost out the door. World's fastest breakup. From Jeff's face, possibly world's nastiest too.

"It was fun," I say, "but I've got to go. I'm so sorry." I don't know why I keep repeating this, except possibly through the small amount of guilt which his heartbroken expression is inspiring in me. He looks utterly lost at my leaving, as if he will not be able to function without me, as if he is seeing the worst thing he has ever seen in his life as I depart...

I feel a twist in my stomach as I relaise what I am actually responding to. Not Jeff. Not Jeff in any way. All the same I do pause and give him a kiss goodbye and tell him he could do much better than me and definitely much better than the crummy job, he should start looking for something more prestigious and far, far away.

"Goodbye Jeff."

"Bye mate."

* * *

I drive towards London. When I reach the Dartford Bridge I stop and eat breakfast, in lieu of sleep, in a horrible supermarket cafe. I feel horrible myself. Drink coffee to feel better but the coffee is also unpleasant. I feel remorse, I realise as I check my phone. Not for Jeff, who frankly was a little overconfident about the outcome of his one night stand – but for John. For leaving him. For how I left him.

I check his blog as I do every day.

There is an update. My heart begins racing.

Oh God. The marker pen. They have got John, mugged him outside our flat in Baker Street, with the marker pen.

John is simultaneously the best and worst person this could have happened to.

He is able - he already knows something is wrong after hearing the girl mention the Hands at the clinic. Even though he has not yet connected the two incidents, his soldier's brain will be turning this over and over, puzzling at its strangeness. And his physical skills will protect him when they come for him.

But the drug - no, this must not be John, how can it be John, the only person I rely on to still be there, and what will I do if - logically, when - he falls sick?

I am panicking. Breathe slowly, seven count in, eleven count out.

I must warn him.

But that risks me, which then risks him.

A friend would warn him without thinking.

I am not that sort of friend.

I hesitate for a long time, drumming my fingers against my phone until I notice and stop.

I type a comment in the blog, waiting until it is buried among the rest of the torrent coming in - John is dearly loved by his followers despite his long absence, interesting and pleasing- and keep my comment short. A brief command not to touch the mark made by the pen. When I reach him, I will take him to whichever test facility appears appropriate to his sickness. I set my brain searching for options.

I am tempted to use one of our code words on my comment, either in the comment or signature, but decide against it. I have no way of knowing if these were compromised while we were in Baker Street.

I choose something silly instead, and hope that the message alone, even if unconfirmed from me, will set him on alert.

And now I must set this aside, take the A2 right into London, find Mycroft in his office and present the data, incontrovertible. Persuade him to act. He says he wants me back in the world: this will be his opportunity to prove to me that he is sincere or at least useful. I cannot take on the Hands, alone.

John, I am on my way. Back to London, back to you.


	20. Sherlock, London, May

I am outside Mycroft's house, and he is not here.

It was a pretty good bet that he would not be at home. I am not sure why he has a home. Picture him sleeping stood up in a corner of his Whitehall office, ready like a sentinel when the next global crisis kicks off.

I am beside his French windows. His security is truly appalling. The house actually has a gatekeeper's lodge, which I walked past. The Land Rover is tucked away in the lane but really I could have driven up and parked in his garage for all the notice I took. The place is deserted. I don't think anyne ever comes here but him.

The security cameras ranged round the front and sides of the building are flimsy thingy hanging from their own wiring, and here at the back overlooking the rose garden, they are nonexistent.

I am surprised. This is not the uber-paranoid Mycroft I remember. Maybe I'm not the only be who has changed.

I give the French doors a swift kick and they cave in. I really hope Mycroft does not keep anything too valuable in here. I should tip off a few local thieves, just to irritate him. No, keep that in reserve. He has actually tried to help me lately. A bit.

I walk into his office cum-dining-room and scowl at the life-size armoured horse statue he keeps in there. Honestly. So affected. At least I limit myself to a skull.

Pang of homesickness, but this is nearly over.

Since Mycroft is out, I will use his computer and maybe have a quick shower, clear my tired brain and think. Then ring him and insist he help me.

I log into his network - pleased I can still predict the password to the safe where he keeps the security token which I need to log in - I still know how his mind works.

I log on to EHCo's VPN using the credentials I got from Bolton. Now I can roam freely, since stupidly they have not changed the security.

There is an update to that test subject memo from last night. The one who lasted twenty four hours.

Apparently twenty four hours is some kind of record. I feel a shiver go through me at how closely I avoided this fate. Ran from them with their needles and their so called immunisation program. But now John is running. Don't think of that now.

I finish reading the document, which goes on to admit that the test subject is no longer available for confirmation that the dose was properly administered, or to perform further tests.

Odd. Not 'dead'. The other documents report the deaths of the test subjects pretty baldly. 'No longer available.'

I blink.

They've lost him.

I can't help smiling. Run, I think to the record breaking survivor. Just run.

Then I run the sample data file I got last night, through one of Mycroft's handy little decryption programs. It takes a while.

As it whirs away I check medical facilities (John!), news items with the Whitstable break in mentioned, Bolton, Crash and Empty Hands' financial movements at lightning speed. The luxury of being connected to the world.

While I am it I check my own website. Have not bothered for ages. Has it been hacked lately?

Yes, it has - a login this very morning, not long ago, using my own password. The cheek.

But then I see the extra file in the private collection and go tense. The file has been written by John.

In his usual terse, understated language he brings me up to date: kidnap, threat of death. And then I realise. Thank God. John is the test subject. The one the Hands lost. The one who lasted more than twenty four hours.

I feel a knot of tension easing in my chest. I still need to get him to a lab, remove the mark, protect him from the Hands - but it seems his life is not in immediate danger.

I read on: Crash – another Crash, this one a young girl, related to the other Crash, or is it just a generic name in the organisation? - and the lawyers arriving to get them off the charges. John's frustration and fear as he writes this.

I write back immediately. _On my way_. I am trembling with relief that he appears to be fine and that soon I will see him, I will be back.

My mind is swimming in exhaustion and emotion and soon I will see John again.

I am trying to think about this when I fall asleep on Mycroft's desk.

* * *

Noises. I open my eyes and realise it is dark. I have been asleep half the day and nothing has been achieved. I sit up, cursing silently.

Is it Mycroft back from whatever secretive practices he has been engaged in today?

No: multiple voices, male, efficient, American. The sharp concise sentences sound military, and something about their low, urgent tones tells me to hide.

It occurs to me that Mycroft's security is not poor at all. It has simply been dismantled. I did not see this. Too tired. Too stupid.

Where is Mycroft?

Who do these people work for?

I am standing motionless in the deep shadow behind the armoured horse when they enter the office.

"We've searched the lab," says one. "Nothing. This whole house - clear. No trace of the data."

My heart pounds.

"He has it," says another voice. Quiet authority. The commanding officer. "He's the only one who could possibly even know it exists."

Mycroft. Mycroft telling me there was nothing in the marker pen device. Telling me to forget all about it.

Lying.

But if the Hands stole the data, ready to smuggle... why are these American agents in Mycroft's house? Did they see me hand something to Mycroft's people at the services?

But if only Mycroft, someone of his reach and power even knew about data this valuable, then how did the Hands get it?

Are these Americans wrong? Perhaps lots of people knew. Top Secret is a very tricky state to manage.

Or ... They are right and Mycroft is the only one who appreciates the value of what is going into those devices. Perhaps Mycroft passed the data to the Empty Hands in the first place, and was rather surprised to get it back again, from me.

It fits. The scale and wealth of the operation speak of serious sponsorship. The human testing, the deaths, though ... surely not.

If this is a Mycroft project, a very under the radar one, then either something has gone wrong, or ... or I do not know my brother at all.

The horse shields me and I maintain absolute stillness, just another indistinct figure in Mycroft's shadowy world, hiding from the people looking for something he has stolen.


	21. Sherlock, London and Kent, May

I cannot stay here. I need to get out. I have lost half a day to unproductive sleep and I still have not spoken to Mycroft or got John to a hospital. I said I was coming to him. I need to move, I cannot remain behind an ornamental horse all my life.

I take a deep breath, release it, and step out into the room.

The agents swing round – two junior plus the more authoritative one. All three are armed and now have weapons directed at me.

I raise my hands slightly, fingers spread.

"Who are you?" The commander speaks.

I stand still, move only my eyes to get a proper look at them. Yes, they are here and they know that Mycroft in his official capacity will be very unhappy to learn of this. They are deadly, sure, but they are also diplomatic trained. Good. It makes them lessikely to shoot me if they work for the division which has to smooth over relations afterwards. "Someone who can find what you're looking for. And tell you what's planned for it."

"Name," barks the commander.

"John Watson," I say.

"Address."

"221B Baker Street."

The most junior one is checking it out on his phone.

"Your connection to Mycroft Holmes?"

I give him a disbelieving look. "I knew his brother," I say.

"The dead brother," says the junior agent. "They used to live together at that address."

"Right. Why are you here?" The commander seems unfazed, a good sign. I make no sudden moves, however.

"Why are you?" I ask. "I'm pretty certain Mycroft would be glad to see me, might even offer me a cup of tea, but you I'm not so sure about. Especially as you are ransacking his home."

"Just sit down and talk." They grab my arms and push me into a chair, the classic position of inferiority, and stand looming over me as if this would be intimidating.

But I have already heard of their failure and I don't feel intimidated at all. "Where is Mycroft?" I demand.

"Not here. Talk."

From his relatively relaxed eye muscles and the normal-range vibrations of his vocal chords I deduce that Mycroft is not in a life or death situation. Probably being delayed in some way which means he cannot interfere with this operation. They don't want him to know they've been here. They probably should have been a bit more subtle with ripping out the security cameras, then.

It strikes me that there will be a visual record of them arriving, doing the ripping, but nothing to show that I was ever here. I hope they don't realise this for two reasons. One, because it means I can land them in it later without involving myself, and two, because it means they don't realise that if I am not proven to be here, they can do what they like with me.

"Your data is in the possession of a man I can take you to. I need to confirm his location though."

I gesture towards my jeans pocket and the commander nods.

I take out my phone. "I can also give you the operation that stole the data," I say, "but in return I want a promise that you'll leave us all alone."

"You can want that as much as you like," says the commander. But he has registered it. Just needs clearance for that kind of decision.

I cannot ring the number – this is not the moment to have that conversation in voice - so compose a text and build trust with the agents by letting them see what I have typed. _Where are you right now?_

There is a pause.

The minutes pass and I begin to regret not waiting, just letting these people leave Mycroft's house disappointed and then going after John directly.

Then my phone vibrates. A text from John. Just the address, nothing else. He does not know – cannot be sure – it is me. Of course. But he is working on the assumption that it is. Just in case.

Ignore the wrench this gives me. Focus.

_MedOneLab, Surrey Quays,_ it says on the screen. Good. He has got to a medical facility, is getting himself checked out. Brilliant John.

The phone buzzes again. _Where are *you*? _Then just his initials at the end, _JW_. I clutch the phone.

"EHCo Lab, Whitstable," I read out from the phone whilst actually typing this into my reply to John. "Just letting him know we're on our way." I delete the reply even as I put it back in my pocket.

"Right." A decision has been silently made while we waited. "Come with us."

They convoy with me back down the tedious non-motorway to Whitstable. I spend the time working out what to do. I risk my fake driving licence by ringing Mycroft. The Americans scowl at me from their Jeep and I give them a nod. Either they are very stupid - not leaving someone in my car with me - or they can just take me out me at any time if I try to escape and so do not need to restrain me. Either way, I bet they haven't got listening equipment with them to overhear what I say to Mycroft.

"You've been burgled,"I say.

"Oh, it's you." He sounds disappointed to hear my voice. His default mode.

"Some Americans with guns have kidnapped me from your house and are taking me to the Empty Hands place in Whitstable you told me about. I take it that's sacrificial?"

"If need be." He is sneering.

"Good." I am giving him the chance to extricate himself. Giving him fair warning. I don't really know why. I suppose he is my brother and that means something. I doubt it means what average people would guess, though.

"Don't do anything too reckless." A faint note of concern? Surely not.

"I'm solving your problem for you," I say nastily. "You can thank me later."

"I rather think that I am solving my problem and that you are merely my chosen means of doing so. Goodbye."

So annoying.

I text Jeff. _Meet me in your break. Want to talk. See you at guard gate. _

That should coincide pretty much with our arrival.

Text John. Am simply assuming he will come. It was always a fair assumption. _Meet Jeff at security gate. Say friend of mine. Vital you get into lab. Say anything to him. SH._

I think my Jeep escort is the only thing stopping me getting pulled over with all this texting.

I have to send one more though. _Is your hand OK? Are you OK? SH. _

I get an effusive if nearly unreadable reply from Jeff in the affirmative.

As we pull up at the EHCo compound I get a text from John. It just says, _OK_.

Nothing else.

Efficiency, I think. He may be driving too.

Do not waste time now considering deeper meanings which you cannot guess and which have no bearings on your actions.

The EHCo place is closed for the evening by the time we arrive. "High security," I tell the agents, not quite accurately.

"That's not a problem. Where's your friend?" They are quick to get me out of the car, and I get a sense if how desperate they must be, to take it basically on trust that I can help them.

"Not here yet."

I give them chapter and verse on how I uncovered a data smuggling operation while following up an old Hands case lead belonging to Sherlock Holmes. I explain how I broke into this very lab and found documents proving everything. And how I believe their data is inside.

They engage in some muttered consultation, during which I calculate how I will get rid of Crash. However Mycroft is involved, Crash is my target. And it is unlikely that he - or his female namesake -will be here. It is more likely that he will be at the headquarters of the illegitimate part of the operation, called Midnight. And I have still not discovered what or where this is.

The agents bring me to the part of the perimeter fence which I had already worked out during my time in Whitstable was the least surveilled, and briskly get us in. Alarms go off, but then the most junior agent gets out an electronic something, blips the nearest alarm wire, and the ringing stops. Handy. I could use one of those.

"Ok, now where."

"The labs. And try to look as if we belong here. The security team are nor completely stupid." No indeed: Jeff is on shift. Another reason I picked him, the sharpest of the lot. Jeff will see us - me - on the cameras.

Will report a breach to Bolton, who will, I trust, come running.

Will not, I hope, get in the way if there is any trouble.

I never used to have this pointless concern for passing civilians. But then I never used to sleep with them either. And now I won't again. No more chemistry-fuelled bonding, no more using my personal assets to get my way. Soon I will have other resources to rely on.

I will be as I was before. If I can.

I can.

We are at the admin building. The door is locked, but nothing stops my American companions. They blow the lock with another charming device which junior has in one of his pockets. I should have brought these three with me the first time.

We get inside and head upstairs. I I have a weary sense of deja vu. I wonder if they have fixed the window I leapt from this morning.

"Ok, I'm getting a little anxious now," says the commander to me. "Where's your friend and where's our data?"

"Not coming and not here," I say, stopping dead in the corridor outside Bolton's office. "But here's someone who knows all about it."

Bolton is inside, and after his experience early this morning, he has learned a little lesson. He has returned to work this evening prepared.

I drop to the carpet with my hands over my head as Bolton fires the shotgun through his office window and straight at us.

Glass spikes down all around me and I think, This is more like it.


	22. Sherlock and John, Kent, May

I roll from the flying glass and jump to a crouch. Keeping my head below the level of the glass windows which line the corridor, I run to the end. The American agents are engaging Bolton. Good.

I head for the lab which is on the top floor. This building is the architectural jewel in Whitstable's crown, a bleached oak weather-boarded behemoth with sweeping curves and a suggestion of a wave rising from the sea, linking the new artificial landscape back into nature, and other such nonsense employed by developers when they want to win awards or build in an ecologically sensitive location. It also makes it difficult to know how many storeys a building has. I ran out of time yesterday - today is my chance not just for evidence gathering but destruction.

I run up the stairs to the sound of gunfire behind me. As I thought. More floors than the building appears to have. And the place I would put a secret lab is on a floor which does not exist.

The door at the top of the stairs is locked. I pull out the marvellous open-everything device I pickpocketed from junior earlier and apply it to the lock as I saw him do. Bang. Door swings open. Think I'll hang on to this little gadget.

Up here is a different world. I am under the crest of the wave shaped roof. Filling the room before me are workstations each with computer, microscope and a beige machine which features a cannister and a claw to hold a marker pen.

Ready for production. Get your data, find your buyer, develop the DNA carrier fluid, put it in the pen and presto, you are ready to apply the stolen information to the skin of someone who can cross the borders of nations or corporations legitimately, carrying the stolen cargo in a way which could never be suspected, never mind detected, by the usual security checks.

This technology has been on the cusp for years. With money and resources, the Hands have brought the future forward considerably. And just as the online porn industry fuelled the technology of the secure credit card payments everyone now takes for granted when buying from a website, so crime, here, has driven another leap into the future of data transport.

Crime and Mycroft.

I start to worry about the connection. I have misunderstood some element here. Why is Mycroft using the Hands for this? He must know their ruthlessness. And why has he given me this facility in Kent to destroy? Why has he made it straightforward for me?

I find marker pens and a cannister ready, it seems, to be loaded into the machine which arms the pen. I do not know how the process works but it cannot be difficult. I want a pen of my own - evidence, and possibly a bargaining tool with Mycroft later. Maybe several pens.

I have created two, with no way of knowing their true efficacy, when I notice that the commotion which was sounding through the building has stopped. All is quiet.

Oh. That means that whoever walked away from the fight will now be looking for me.

I stuff the pens into my jeans pocket and look around. I am at the top of a building, some four floors up, in an odd shaped room with a flowing ceiling. Light comes from skylights overhead, square holes in the wave - like curve which swoops from here almost to the ground.

There is only one door and angry people are about to walk through it. It doesn't really matter at this point if they work for the Hands or the US government, because both options will probably come in shooting.

I clamber onto a desk and reach upwards. Magic tool again, bang, one unlocked skylight. It is lucky I am tall. A stroke of genetic luck. With the technology coming to fruition all around me, there may never be such natural luck again.

I hoist myself onto the lip of the skylight. Yes: I am on the crest of the wave, the shallow convex which drops off sharply to my left.

I ease through the window and shut it behind me as quietly as I can.

I am now on the roof, in the dark, with the floodlit facility spread out beneath me..

I hate roofs.

* * *

John pays the cabbie and walks to the gates of EHCo. His hand is hurting, more now after Priya's tests than before. She helped him dress it, complaining that he was running off before all the results were in. "Got to," he said. "Friend. Needs my help." All his words seemed to have disappeared and he was reduced to these brisk sentences. If he appeared ungrateful for her help, so be it.

"Must be a special friend to have you running all over the place when you're injured," she said with a hint of disappointment.

"Yeah. " Must be, John thought. A couple of texts with those initials on, and he was off like a rocket, ready to go anywhere, do anything, and on what evidence? Nothing. Sherlock's old number.

He was a fool. And a fool likely to get himself killed. Those texts, they could be from anyone.

He kept telling himself that. It didn't't work though.

If there was even a chance. A slim chance. Any chance.

Priya wound the dressing around his wrist and fastened it for him.

"Thanks. " He jumped down off the lab desk where he'd been sitting while she worked. "Can you text me the results? Please?"

"OK. I am going home now, " she said.

Home, he thought. Baker Street is not your home. It's mine and Sherlock's. But he just said, "OK. Great. See you later."

She smiled at him anxiously. Put her hand on his back – then drew it back suddenly. "What is that?"

He slid away from her, pulling his coat on. "Nothing. "

She didn't believe him for a second. "That's not nothing, John."

"OK. You're right. It's the gun I'm not supposed to have that I told Lestrade I was handing back and you do not know about it, OK. Got to go. Thanks. Bye."

Now he is in Kent, apparently at the facility to which Crash wanted to take him two nights ago. His task is to get inside, using Sherlock's name and the supposed goodwill of the security guard to do so. Then go to the lab.  
He sighs, but gets on with it.

The guard gate is a small booth beside a swing down barrier. It, like the rest of the buildings here, is floodlit. Yellow light in the booth shows a large middle aged man drinking from a mug and watching his monitors with one eye, and a younger man with very short blonde hair looking out of the window. Both are in guard uniforms.

John walks to the gate and knocks on the door of the booth. "I'm looking for Jeff," he says. He tries to sound friendly, neutral, as if it is quite normal to pop out to a windswept coastline of an evening and make a social call to a security booth.

The younger man stands. " I'm Jeff. Who are you mate?"

"Friend of mine has a message for you." John steps round the barrier.

Jeff comes outside. He is broad shouldered, looks fit. His face holds suspicion. "This is private property, what do you want?"

Tell him anything, Sherlock' s message said. "I'm a friend of Sherlock's," he says.

"Who?"

Of course. An alias , and Sherlock has not told him what it is. John reaches for his wallet, pulls it out. "Hang on. Him." He shows Jeff Sherlock 's driving licence, keeping his thumb over the name. It is just about the only photo of him which John possesses.

"John" says Jeff, looking at the photo. His eyes light up. Turns back to John. "You're a mate of his?"

"Yes," says John, and his stomach flips. This Jeff has seen Sherlock, recently, and alive. He is speaking in the present tense.

"All right then, what is it? He said he was going to meet me here." Jeff looks around with hopeful eyes. Hungry eyes. He is positively glowing.

Oh Sherlock, what did you do to this man?

"We need to get into the lab," John says with a confidence he does not feel. "He's - John's inside already. Sent me to tell you. Change of plan."

Jeff eyes John. "He can't be. No-one gets past this gate without me knowing. And believe me, I would know if he'd walked past." That hopeful glow again, subsumed now beneath a professional tone.

"Not necessarily. He may not be the person you think he is. We work for the Government and if he wanted to get into a building he could." This has a believable ring to it. "Why don't you ring him?"

As soon as he says it, John realises that this is a bad idea. But Jeff is already drawing out his phone.

Jeff looks John up and down with unimpressed eyes. John stares back: Yeah, I might be ten years older but I could still take you. Jeff punches numbers in his phone. " All right, mate," he says, "I will."


	23. Sherlock and John, Kent

I cling to the roof, drawing up courage to slide down the wooden wave and drop the eight feet to the ground from its lip. It is steep, and if I lose control during the descent I will fly off the edge like a ski jumper, without the benefit of snow at the bottom.

It has to be done. I can hear movement and an angry voice in the lab beneath me. Bolton. I would have preferred the agents; they have some kind of protocol to follow.

But at least he cannot know I have climbed out into the roof.

My phone rings.

Oh. Damn.

I crush it into silence but already the skylight is swinging open. I scramble back over there and try to smash the window down into Bolton's emerging head but he shoves me aside and climbs out.

A wailing alarm sounds across the facility. I hear shouts from the guard gate, and running footsteps as I grapple with Bolton.

One of us needs to fall off this roof and it must not be me.

Bolton is strong, the hard power which comes from a lifetime of violence. But I am cunning and I have bested him before. I let him get hold of me and wrestle me onto the hump of the roof. As he puns me down in triumph and reaches for his gun I take out one of the marker pens and jab him in the eyes with it, one-two and he staggers back.

I try to get up, get free, but he is strong. His hands grip my shoulders even as his eyes are streaming and his is crying out in pain. I stagger backwards trying to remember where the sharp downwards slope begins. He has me. He has his hands on my arms pinning mine to my sides and he is going to push me off the edge.

No. Not after all this. I struggle and writhe and bite but he is too strong. I force his body away from me but even so, blinking, he still has control and is walking me towards the edge.

"No!" I gasp as I am forced towards oblivion.

There is a fight happening on the ground too, yells and blows and scuffling footsteps on the concrete.

I am about to fall off a roof in a very unplanned way. It will hurt and perhaps kill me.

And I have never told John.

There is an explosion of noise and Bolton screams, lets me go, twisting away from me. Shot, shot in the arm, and I am free but he clutches at me and we tumble together down the long drop of the wave to the unrelenting concrete.

* * *

Impact. I land on Bolton and feel him break underneath me as his head and spine strike the ground. I lie stunned, thinking, I am not dead, am I hurt? and around me legs and shins struggle and kick until with a gut wrenching cry Jeff appears beside me, on his knees, hands forced behind his back.

John's voice, gritted teeth but steady: "For once Sherlock could it please not be a roof?"

Jeff wriggles, furious and afraid. I have blood on my face and Bolton is motionless beneath me.

"Cable ties," I gasp. "His back pocket."

John removes them and ties Jeff's wrists, pushes him away. Turns to me.

I see his face for the first time in so long and it is calm, concerned, in control. My eyes are watering. "John. I'm sorry."

"We need to move," John says. "I think this one's dead. Yes. He is."

"I've got a car." I am still numb from the impact. I cannot take my eyes from John's face.

"You bastard," says Jeff to me, and his voice cracks.

John tilts his head to one side a moment, then gives a mouth shrug and punches Jeff. Jeff topples sideways and lies on the ground with his head next to Bolton's.

John turns from Jeff, drops to a crouch and kneels beside me.

* * *

John runs his hands over Sherlock, checking for injury. Sherlock fidgets under his hands, twisting away, resisting. "Let me examine you," John says, in a tone that will not tolerate argument. Sherlock subsides. and John checks arms, head, neck, ribs, Sherlock's long slender legs.

It is also a reason to touch him, to confirm that he is here, real, whole. John finds the bandaged left arm and spends too long gently feeling the flesh around the wound, checking for any signs of infection. There are none.

Sherlock is fine, he is as whole and warm and difficult and beautiful as ever, and he is scowling at John and John frowns at him and insists on a final pulse check just to make his point.

John straightens up. "You're fine. Now what?" He gives himself a moment before moving, making a play of his old injury giving him trouble again, but really it is to disguise the weakness which runs from the pit of his stomach down both legs to his knees. Sherlock's skin is smooth and fine and touchable only with professional hands. Pull yourself together, man. Work to be done.

"Now we find my car and get out of here," says Sherlock.

* * *

John examines me and I wriggle as his hands are on me. He has his neutral, doctor face on, small frown of concentration. It doesn't take that much concentration to do a routine exam. I glare at him for spending so much time and he takes my pulse twice to show me who's in charge.

I missed this beyond words.

His hands leave me and I complain about wasted time and how we need to get up and move, all the while wondering, why so much focus, John? What are you really thinking?

Shock, I realise. He is trying to hide his reaction at seeing me.

This is the kind of repression that leads to psychosomatic injuries later.

Now is the wrong moment to mention this - too busy, too much to do plus he is in shock - but I add to my list of John related tasks, for later.

For the moment I content myself with resting my hand on his shoulder. My index finger just touches the bare warm skin of his neck. He is real and here and I am grinning at the mere fact of this. Everything will be fine.

He gives me a funny look and says, "I think you're in shock."

* * *

Alarms are sounding but there are only three people on the night shift security team and we have accounted for two of them. The Americans have vanished.

Jeff calls out to me as I gingerly stand up. His eyes plead with me as John stands dangerously by. "I never thought you'd come back," Jeff says. "When I got your text, I thought - I hoped -"

He has cut through the events of the last two days and got directly to the thing which matters most to him. I actually envy him his straightforwardness.

I pause, crouch beside him. "I'm sorry," I tell him. Jeff, my last bit of freedom before the jaws of Mycroft's surveillance close around me again. I run my thumb along his jawline, see the luminous desire in his face, sigh and get up. John steadies me with his arm as we walk to the Land Rover.

John has a strange expression on his face. Now he looks pale and grey. We reach the Land Rover and he leans back on the bonnet for a moment while I extract the keys from my jeans.

"John," I say, "sit down. You're going to have a shock reaction. You might not feel it yet but it will hit you within the next few minutes."

"No, I'm not," he says.

I put my hands on his shoulders. "You are, please, let me drive while you rest."

"Sherlock - I'm fine. Really."

I look at him. His eyes are steady and clear. He is standing now, loose and easy, no hint of tremor, no hint, even, of surprise at seeing me. His eyes take in my short hair, polo shirt, blue jeans, with nothing more than slight bemusement.

How is he doing this?

I am shaking.

"How?" I say. "How are you ... fine?"

He smiles slightly, snatches it back again. Shrugs. "I never believed you were dead," he says, and climbs into the driver's seat.

We drive, making for the woods and fields of Kent.


	24. Chapter 24

In the car, later, Sherlock is driving and John is staring out if the window with his face turned slightly to the left. There is a lot to say but neither of them say it. John feels pressure building inside him. Sherlock is impassive at the wheel of the Land Rover.

They are going to park and sleep and form a plan - or more accurately, follow whatever plan Sherlock is forming as he frowns at the road right now - tomorrow.

They are actually going to sleep on it, close their eyes and rest and get up tomorrow and do more driving and God knows what else, before talking about it, any of it.

John notices that his fists are clenched. He deliberately uncurls them.

Sherlock can go for days without a word. That's fine usually. But not now. Not now, not when, not after -

John says, "And how do you know Jeff?" It comes out sounding ridiculous, needy, jealous, petty. It was also not the conversation he meant to start.

"I rented his spare room for a couple of weeks." Sherlock glances across. They are in country lanes, no street lights, just the dim green glow of the dashboard lights.

"You seem very close." He hasn't meant to say close but now it hangs in the air, impossible to unsay.

"No," Sherlock says. Looking at the road.

"Sherlock, I'm not blind. He couldn't take his eyes off you for a second. And he was gutted to see me. The sexual stuff between you was ... pretty obvious."

"Then why are you fishing for answers?"

"I don't know."

John hesitates. Say it anyway. Hesitates again.

"Did you sleep with him?"

"Yes, John," Sherlock says, not bothering to look across, "we were lovers."

Hearing him say it so flatly is a shock.  
Sherlock looks up. "He runs the security detail at the plant."

"Oh." Relief, for a reason John does not explore. "So, what, you seduced him to get the security key?" He pictures Sherlock's resources, bent to a specific task, and pities Jeff. He wouldn't have stood a chance.

"Exactly. And afterwards I was able to put it back, unnoticed."

They drive on, heading for a wilderness where Sherlock can assess the fallout of the events at EHCo.

John gradually realises that Sherlock said, lovers. Not the sort of word you use for a one night stand. The ground shifts under his feet again.

Imagining Sherlock living with, loving this person sends a tremor through John's gut. He moistens his lips, knows it will cause a row and says it anyway: "So I was on my own, all that time, and you were shacked up with some bloke?"

Sherlock frowns at the road. "It was a means to an end."

"So you used him. You do know that's worse?" John can hear the crackle in his own voice, the edges of hysteria.

"I didn't use him." Sherlock's reasonable tone, the one which makes him sound guilty because nothing he says or does is reasonable, reasonable is for other people. "It was perfectly consensual. It was fun."

"Fun?"

Sherlock could hardly have said anything more hurtful.

"Yes John, when two adults with a natural urge decide to fulfill that urge in a mutually beneficial way. A bit of fun." He makes it sound like he is quoting.

"Fine," John says then. "I don't know why we're even talking about it. It's none of my business who you sleep with."

Sherlock gives a slow sideways glance at John's face.

John adds in a rush. "I guess it just galls me to think that while I was grieving for you, you were having it away with some young stud."

He sits, arms folded, staring with his head turned more than necessary to look out of the window. Where there is nothing to see because it is the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere.

Sherlock's tone is angry and cold. "I'm not going to pretend it was all horrible just to maintain your fantasy about how I should have behaved while I was gone."

"I didn't think you were gone, I thought you were dead." There: it has finally been spoken and they are having the conversation they ought to have started with.

"No you didn't. You said." Sherlock sounds puzzled and offended.

"Maybe I lied about that," says John.

"Why would you do that? How could it benefit you?"

He has no idea. John makes a noise of furious frustration, then heaves a sigh, measuring out the breath, the length of his patience with Sherlock. "It wouldn't benefit me," he says. "It was for you."

Sherlock frowns at this. John waits for an apology, but after at least a minute, all Sherlock says is, "Don't judge me, John."

John actually gasps - cannot help it - and feels tears, stupid tears, rising behind his eyes. He clenches his jaw and stares out of the window.

Sherlock has no clue. No clue. He just swans off with no thought for anyone else, then turns back up and blithely starts telling about his romantic adventures, and all the time he was gone John never, not once, looked at anybody else.

He is aware of how ridiculous this sounds, even in his own head. He and Sherlock are not a couple, never have been. It was just what it was and that was fine.

He thought the two of them had that in common - that whatever it was, it was fine just like that. Even when obviously it was not fine... but it was...ok. It was fine.

But no. It seems that the minute John is out of sight Sherlock has no issue with ... any of it. Sex, John thinks deliberately. No issue with sex. He has been shagging his way round the country and having a grand old time.

It still makes no sense to him, is not the Sherlock he think he knows. Maybe that's it. Maybe he has never known him.

He thinks of Sherlock running his thumb along Jeff's jaw, and swallows.

No. No more.

This is it. All the stupidity, over. Friendship was what Sherlock wanted from him, and that was fine. The other stuff could go back in its box.

"You're upset," Sherlock says, more gently than usual.

Oh no. He was not falling for the charm. No more of that.

"I'm fine," John says. "I think I'm just shattered. Bit of a funny day." He gives a rueful grin and tries to sound tired, which is not hard.

"We'll park up and sleep," Sherlock says immediately. Of course: practical stuff he can do, he can understand.

"Ok. Yes. Good."

They turn down a narrow lane, then through a gate into a patch of silver birches.

"Are you all right?" A pause, the palpable sense of Sherlock making a huge effort to be human. "I didn't mean to offend you."

Offend. "I am not offended," John says truthfully. "Come on, let's forget it. Park up and you can demonstrate your survival skills. You making camp, this I have to see."

Sherlock looks closely at him, eyes glittering. But John is at least as good an actor as he. Look all you like, he thought. You'll get nothing. I lived with you two years and you never had a clue. So look.

Sherlock frowns slightly. Drawing a blank. He turns back to the road and begins positioning the Land Rover under the trees.

John leans back in his seat, breathes evenly, thinks of neutral things, gets his composure back. Jesus. Sherlock, honestly.

He has not even been back a day.


	25. Chapter 25

I thought John had not seen me. Focusing on his struggle on the ground with Jeff, he had given no sign that he knew I was on the roof, wrestling with Bolton. And yet he had noticed me and realised that I was in peril and formulated a plan to take Bolton down and eliminate the security team all without letting on that anything was happening.

This is one of my favourite things about John: his competence.

There is another aspect to this which makes it even more remarkable - makes him even more remarkable.

Until the moment that he saw me, John can have had no proof that I was definitely still alive.

Anyone can make contact through a blog. Anyone can play the childish, hurtful game of masquerading as a deceased friend.

John cut through all that in a microsecond. He saw me and understood it all at once and saved me.

He fell in with my plan to escape, to run, and do whatever tasks tomorrow brings, without question. He displayed that absolute trust and confidence in me which I have always found so astonishing - and touching. Who would ask nothing, demand nothing, under circumstances such as these? In my experience, only John.

And then like the utter fool that I have been playing, living in my body as not-me, I told him about Jeff and he was terribly, terribly angry.

It was difficult to see, driving in those dark lanes, but I think he was almost crying with fury.

I mentally kick myself. Selfish. Forgetting that he is unaware of the not-me and only knows, has only ever seen, the me who lives under Mycroft's eye, the half man who fills his life with work to avoid revealing anything about love.

And I don't love Jeff, anyway, though it would not help to mention that now. I did like the sex though, very much. Warm kisses and tender touches, have not previously featured greatly in my sex life, but Jeff was an affectionate and generous lover. Another thing to not say to John.

I am bewildered by my own stupidity on this point. To mention sleeping with Jeff, to John, who thinks I exist in an asexual bubble, would be startling and crass at any time. To further add that it was marvellous fun, is pure insult. No wonder he was upset.

I am an idiot.

I need, urgently, to be me again.

I need to start lying to John again.

He is sleeping now, lying on one side of the Land Rover floor, with the sleeping bag spread over him. It is just dawn outside, and as I emerge from my thoughts I notice that I have turned my body towards him as I sit, as if he radiates comfort across the cold space to me. I understand this subconscious action. John is a very comforting person to be around.

I have missed him more than I ever imagined possible.

I shift my body slightly. I have been sitting up, my back against the wheel arch, with my arms around my knees, all night. It is time to get up and my limbs are aching.

I stretch as best I can in the confined space and then kneel beside John. In the increasing light I see how the grey in his hair has multiplied and how he holds his jaw set and clenched, even in sleep. He looks like a solider.

I stay very still.

John. It is John, at last and I am not alone.

I do not move, barely breathe, for some time. I am drinking him in and it is such relief that my throat aches.

At last I must wake him. I touch the back of my hand to his cheek.

His eyes open and his nearest hand shoots out and grips my shoulder. "Are you all right?"

"It's time to get up," I say, and then turn my face away so he cannot see that I have been weeping.

Xxxxx

**Author's note:** just a short chapter. But there will be more soon! -Sef


	26. Chapter 26

John's phone beeps. He looks at it. Sherlock is driving again, of course.

_Congratulations. MH _

John's cheek twitches. He has spent considerable time and effort avoiding Mycroft. He'd hoped that his obvious lack of interest in anything the man had to say might put him off. Clearly not.

He does not know what to reply. Perhaps: _No congratulations are required? There is nothing to congratulate me about? Piss right off and leave me alone? _

It all seems wrong and yet the message sits there on the screen, burning him. Mycroft's assumptions and interferences hurt.

Sherlock is back. John is glad. More glad than he has ever known. But although things are calmer today, things are not instantly back the way they were before. A friendship without secrets could not be mended so quickly. A friendship like theirs - may never be the same again.

_Do you think your brother has simply made me happy?_

He clenches the phone in his fist and puts it back in his jeans.

"Mycroft," says Sherlock, eyes on the road. They are approaching the river and will soon be in east London.

John looks at him.

"No one else makes me want to stamp on a phone," Sherlock says. He slides his eyes sideways at John. "I have certainly not missed his constant meddling."

John doesn't respond to the Mycroft thing, but asks, "Where are we going?"

"We need to find Crash and get the police involved. Straightforward. Could have done it last night but felt too tired."

Sherlock is missing out part of the plan. John knows this. Sherlock does it instinctively: leaves John out of the plan. There is usually a reason for this, but still. It rasps against raw places.

"It's a place called Midnight," says Sherlock. "I have no idea where or what that is but we need to identify it and collect Crash. Both Crashes."

"Midnight," says John in surprise. "That's a nightclub opposite where I work."

* * *

"I can't wait to get out of these clothes," Sherlock says as they drive through the Rotherhithe Tunnel, under the Thames. The ceiling lights pass overhead in an even sequence, mesmerising. "I feel... unauthentic." He wriggles irritably.

John is not about to comment on Sherlock's outfit. It does look very strange though, and more so under these strobing tunnel lights: pale blue polo shirt, blue jeans, some kind of walking boots. Sherlock habitually dresses to intimidate, and this getup is the opposite of threatening. The short hair, too: weirdly it makes him look more vulnerable and gentle than the flowing curls did. And something about the hands. In these clothes, they seem more connected to the rest of his body, not merely emerging from the tailored suit sleeves as bodiless wrists. His wrists have always been sensual, of course. But now they are sensual and with a body attached.

Such thoughts. These would be the thoughts that John has only last night promised himself he would put away. He sighs at his own hopelessness. He doesn't really mind. It has always been hopeless, right from the start. Everything about them has. It's fine.

"What?" Sherlock asks sharply as John sighs.

"Your clothes are all still in the flat," John says.

"I can't go back there. Mycroft will be looking for me. And you." Making lane changes, watching the traffic, brimming with energy now.

"I know how to hide," says John.

"He always found you before. With the cameras."

"I wasn't trying not to be found. Come on, I can get us into Baker Street without him knowing a thing." Has Sherlock forgotten John? Forgotten what he can do? Or did he subscribe to the accepted view, that John has spent months useless, wrapped up in misery?

"Can you?" Sherlock's tone: frank surprise.

"Yeah. Done it loads of times."

Sherlock is giving him a funny look. Respect? Puzzlement.

"Yeah, 'cos you're the only person who doesn't like his private life being snooped on." John rolls his eyes. Sherlock exists at the centre of Sherlock's universe. Everyone else is background detail.

"I didn't know it bothered you," says Sherlock.

John shrugs. There are a lot of things you don't know. "You never asked."

A brief silence. Sherlock may be processing John's comment or, more likely, he has moved on and is considering their next course of action.

"Let's do this Midnight thing," John says, "and then I'll get us into the flat and you can make yourself look like Sherlock Holmes again." he pauses. "It must have been weird, all that time not being yourself." This is how Sherlock phrased it to him, explaining.

Sherlock stares ahead, the tunnel lights pulsing over his face. "I wish I'd had you with me," he says, and then they are out of the tunnel and he winds down his window to throw coins into the toll bucket.

John blinks. Sherlock seems sincere. Seems sad.

John's throat clenches. Might as well say it now as any time. "I missed you too," he says lightly.

They stare ahead, and then simultaneously turn to make eye contact. It is like a flashbulb, painful, bright, a moment to flinch from even as the photographer is saying, everyone look this way now. And then the thing is done and they refocus on the road, and the route, and the tasks they must complete.

John slept for several hours last night in the back of the van, but now he feels as if he could sleep for a week, untouched by dreams.

* * *

A nightclub in daylight: a drab, dirty place smelling of sour beer and sweat.

Midnight is trying to be classy, is going for a certain clientele, going for gothic luxe. But it is failing. John switches on the lights and sees blood red walls and gilt mirrors and more mirrors on the ceiling and ornate wrought iron spiral staircases leading up to little platforms where, presumably, the keener customers can dance for the entertainment of the others. Or maybe it is where paid dancers perform. He does not know enough about club culture to be sure. It seems trashy, not luxurious.

There is a long bar finished in copper, curving around two sides of the room. Drinking is big here. The dance floor occupies the centre of the space, with plush booths around the remaining two edges.

Upstairs is a viewing gallery, in a sloping-glass room like a sports commentators' box. More wrought iron stairs wind up to this, and across the entrance to the stairs is a thick rope. VIPs only, then.

Sherlock closes the fire door behind him and looks around, taking it in with his calculating eyes as if he routinely assesses would-be-gothic nightclubs in the course of his day to day life. "Not enough curtains for a truly Victorian gothic ambience," he comments. "But then that would retain the smell even more powerfully than the revolting velvet upholstery already does."

He whirls away, his movements the same in polo shirt and blue jeans as in his black Belstaff coat, graceful and precise. John envies him that poise and his carelessness of his own physical presence. Like an athlete, or a dancer: moves without needing to consider it, the mind in total control of the body at a deeper level than merely controlling the arms and legs.

John follows Sherlock up the VIP stairs.

The gallery is done out in a way which makes John think, manufactured madness. Curtains, if that's what Sherlock really wanted: the whole back wall is draped in heavy velvet. Dark wing chairs are grouped around little ebony coloured tables. Wall mounted candelabras, with writhing figures support artificial candles. Low velvet pouffes are arrayed to the front of the gallery so the VIPs can lean over the dance floor with their drinks and pick out partners, lovers, rivals. The carpet is patterns with large blotches and dots, dark red against grey, and John has to blink for a moment. "Blood spatter," he says then, and Sherlock sniffs.

The ceiling here is mirrored too, at a slight angle, and John keeps catching glimpses of himself and Sherlock, tops of heads, hand gestures, as they explore the area.

It has its own bar, with elaborate optics. Instead of upside-down bottles held in little clamps, there are jars like chemists' jars, with curly clear pipes leading away down behind the counter. The glasses are shot glasses but shaped like miniature chalices. The Gothic thing again, it is clearly meant to recall a laboratory.

"This isn't it," Sherlock says in irritation. "We checked the office. Nothing. No sign, no link. No sign of connection to their delivery method. No sign of the wretched pens. Nothing. This can't be the place."

John shakes his head. "Too much of a coincidence, don't you think? Crash, the Hands, and this place, all on the street where I work. There's something here. I don't know what though."

"No."Sherlock flops down in a wing chair and presses his fingertips together. "Have you got your phone?"

This again? John hands it over and drops into the chair beside Sherlock's.

Sherlock looks through. Finds the text from Mycroft and scowls, glancing at John. John shrugs. Whatever. Sherlock texts: "Sherlock, where are you? My hand hurts. I feel bad."

Presses Send.

John gives him a quizzical look.

"Mycroft," says Sherlock. "Just a hunch."

"You don't do hunches," says John.

"Ok, not a hunch. An experiment. See how closely two things are linked."

"Am I supposed to not know which number is yours and which is your brother's?"

"You are clearly in distress and thinking even less coherently than usual." He still has John's phone.

Now he shoves his hand into his own pocket and gets out his phone. Googles. How did he cope in the wild? John watches as he types another message to a number he has copied off the internet. This one reads: "Data is in place. Payment required."

He gives John his phone back. "Ok," says John, "who else have you just tried to attract to my location?"

"Echelon," says Sherlock.

"What? Who?"

He gives John the look which lets John know how stupid he is. "Echelon. The listeners. The people with the giant white balls on the tops of hills. Supposedly they run every bit of voice and text data through enormous computers, picking up key words. Bomb, terrorism, et cetera."

"But you didn't use any of those words."

"Because that's not how it works."

"So how does it work?"

Sherlock just looks at him and does not reply.

"Right. Fine." John sighs. "So what did you just do exactly?"

"The listening program does work but it is very slow. About three months to a year behind, depending on the data being monitored. This was quicker."

"What?"

"I just emailed them."

He looks at John. He is waiting. Seems uncertain, even nervous. Testing John's reaction.

John looks back. Sherlock emailed the secret government monitoring service. The people with the giant white balls. He gives in. "Ok, all right. It's funny." He sighs a smile and sees Sherlock's face lift.

It lasts a second. Then Sherlock is away, frowning, checking his phone for replies. Nothing yet. Evidently neither Mycroft nor Echelon believes in impulse moves.

Sherlock is nodding to himself. John does not question it. What would be the point? Sherlock knows what the plan is. John does not. Situation normal. Sherlock relies on him to react in the correct way. At some level that is flattering. And John would never agree to the plans if he knew them in advance. Sherlock is clever and knows this, of course, and so this is how they go on.

"John - does your hand actually hurt?"

Sherlock reaches out and takes John's hand without preamble, and examines it as you might inspect roadkill on your tyre. His lips curl in revulsion. His fingers peel back the dressing without asking permission and he bends his eye close to the wound where Priya's scrape lies alongside the one Lestrade's medic gave John before.

"Yes, it does actually hurt," John says. "Especially when you prod it, get off." He tries to move his hand away but Sherlock has a strong grip and was prepared for him to try.

"Think you could stand another scrape?" Sherlock asks, still squinting at the moist wounds. He turns John's hand over and looks at his palm, his wrist, his fingernails, back again to look at the wound, his eyes flickering.

"What? No thanks." John lets his hand go limp before Sherlock sprains his wrist.

"Might need to," Sherlock says casually, dropping John's hand.

John tapes the dressing back down as best he could. With a bit of luck it won't start bleeding again, but luck has not been his strong point lately. He flexes his fingers.

Yes, now it really does sting. He glances resentfully at Sherlock, who is already gazing off into the distance, John forgotten.

John gets up and pokes around the VIP lounge. The curtains are stapled to the ceiling and floor, he realises. Purely decorative. Of course, but something seems off. How are they cleaned?

Why does he care?

He doesn't. It is just a habit, acquired through long association with Sherlock and his constantly wondering mind.

He tugs on the curtain and it doesn't move. Works his way along the back wall, frowning.

Sherlock is on his feet too, leaning against the viewing wall, looking at the dance floor. He has his hands pressed to the sloping glass, fingers splayed. John rolls his eyes. No more drops from a great height, please. "Too mundane," mutters Sherlock.

He presses his forehead to the glass. "Mycroft, Echelon, Americans. But we don't have Crash. We need him. Both of them. And the connection to this place." He bangs his head on the glass with a hollow clang.

John finds a place on the back wall where the curtain moves. Aha. This must be where they detach it for cleaning. His hand throbs and he curses Sherlock for fiddling with the dressing.

"So," he says. "This, this data or whatever. I'm just going to walk round with this on me, for the next fifty years?"

Sherlock's head snaps up.

* * *

"Is this just... on me... for the rest of my life?" John asks.

I stop dead. Of course. The degradation process. Or rather, the lack thereof.

I have never considered any long term effects. I expect this is because neither had Mycroft. He accepted the Hands' methods, assuming he has been aware of them - must reluctantly give him the benefit of the doubt. They have been prepared to harvest from living or dead tissue, and frankly, once the subject has smuggled their data, probably unknowingly, what use is that subject to them?

So either the Hands planned to kill every smuggler - which would soon become unwieldy and impractical - or they were just going to leave the DNA in place, and collect when convenient.

The collection is not time critical.

But the data is, potentially, time critical. And then the delivery method makes no sense.

"That's it," I says to John, and see his look of horror and confusion. "No," I add, realising that I am answering my own question and not his. "I mean, I don't know. That's not what I mean."

I am stammering. Failing completely to reassure him, but that will have to wait. He will understand.

Mycroft would never invent a delivery method which involved leaving a trace. Impossible to imagine. The marker pens - they must be the clumsy re-use, by the Hands, of an existing technology, some alternative for people with a phobia of needles, perhaps. A way to test the solution. To test that it was carrying the DNA data.

The solution...

This human testing, this business with the marker pens: this is purely the Hands.

I feel giant relief at this. I hoped Mycroft would not be so stupid as to become involved in anything so sordid. No: Mycroft has only been so stupid as to trust Crash, a mistake I never made, and now he has lost control. Crash has seen, of course, the enormous potential of this idea, and run with it. In his twisted way, he has improved it, carried out broad tests, made it scalable. It would be admirable if it were not for all the murder.

Mycroft has used me to get inside the organisation, and to get proof of the data theft. That is to say, to pin blame for the theft on someone other than the actual thief, in other words, him. With this he can sell out the Hands and close down the operation.

He is still responsible for sponsoring the development of technology which has killed many people. I expect even as I stand here, that all records of this are being destroyed.

Mycroft would be horrified to learn that the data might be permanent. But - a new hope - I expect he has never even contemplated it. He does not have a human, a normal person, a John, to point out the real cost of his actions. And that will be his downfall, his Achilles heel, even as he maintains that John is mine.

John says, "Forget it. Sherlock, there's a crack here, looks like a door."

I turn to him. He is standing in the corner of the room, running his hands along the velvet curtains. He has found a door. Probably a fire exit. My eyes travel past him to the bar, and those unusual optics. "That's it!" I exclaim.

He looks pleased, then realises I am not talking about the curtains.

Before I can explain we hear a noise.

Voices downstairs, and sounds of several pairs of feet.

"You were hoping Crash would turn up," John says, wrenching back the curtain to reveal a fine crack in the door.

I am beside him, pressing the edges, trying to work out how it opens, as footsteps ring on the iron spiral staircase up to the VIP gallery.

"No pressure," says John.

"Brilliant!" I say, and stamp the floor. The pressure sensor triggers and the door springs open. "After you," I say, and we hustle through, slamming it behind us as Crash and his minions burst into the gallery.


	27. Chapter 27

We stand on the fire exit stairs and look around. No reply from Mycroft or anyone. Annoying.

People are in the gallery. We need to decide whether to run or confront them. I look all around at the car park, the Land Rover over the road, the cylindrical bins overflowing with last night's rubbish. I see movement.

I reach around John and run my hand down his back. The weapon. "Give," I say.

"No," he says, twisting away.

"They'll expect you to be armed," I say. "They don't know me from Adam."

"They'll have seen you on the security footage from EHCo," John says. "No, Sherlock, that's a truly stupid plan."

He is right but I still want the gun.

He is strong but I am fast.

"This makes perfect sense," I say, sliding the pistol from his jeans and gripping his arm, "because you couldn't shoot the girl and I can."

I swing round and aim the pistol at her before she can clock me with the fire extinguisher.

"Oh" says John. "Good point." He disarms her and she spits at him. "Hello Crash," he says. "Lovely to see you again."

* * *

It is all very civilised. I have not touched my drink and, following my cue, neither has John. The others chug down their vodka and bang the glasses down as if they are doing shots on a heavily armed hen night.

I catalogue the people now in the VIP gallery.

Crash. He is in full mobster regalia: the sheepskin coat, the leather gloves, the threatening scowl. So dated.

Crash the girl. His daughter, now I see them side by side. Same silvery eyes. John's assessment of her from his kidnap appears correct: she has seniority because of her family connection, but she has screwed up in letting John go. And there is something else too. I know what, but I am saving it for later. Meanwhile John's pistol is in my hand and trained on her, and John keeps scowling at me as if to imply that he could kill her in cold blood.

Two other men, in their best sidekick outfits of black leather jackets and pierced everything. More tedium, thank God I work for the (mostly) good guys and am free to wear decent clothes. When I get the chance.

We are here to talk. To negotiate. The gun waving is just to keep things moving along.

"Now you know who I am," I say. "You know my brother too. Perhaps not directly but you know he is powerful."

They shrug, grimace, do tough guy faces.

"He sent me to keep you in check," I tell them. "Undercover, naturally. He sent me to find the frankly gaping holes in your security. Because," I add, seeing they do not follow me, "your gaping holes are also his, and he was not best pleased to find out about them."

I am really hoping that Mycroft is listening on the phone call I am making to him in my pocket, because otherwise he won't be able to maintain this flaky fiction when he shows up.

"But the main thing which drew my attention to you was the compete incompetence of your test program," I say. This part is completely true. "Corpses everywhere." I tut dramatically and eyeball Crash as the culprit in this laxity.

"This man is your patient zero," I say, pointing at John who looks round rather wildly. "Or rather, he's mine."

I enjoy their faces as they look from John to Crash the girl. Her father is furious with her. I continue, "You administered the solution using the unauthorised technology. My brother did not employ you to use the pens, or human testing at all, for that matter but I'll let that pass. Call it keenness on your part. You administered the solution to this man and came to collect the sample data but he did not die."

I stare at Crash the girl. "You then displayed your usual level of uselessness and let him get away. Your supposed top operative ended up arrested. Attention was drawn. My brother was most unhappy."

I am doing my best impression of Mycroft's supercilious delivery. He must be sniggering on the other end of the line.

"Here he is," I tell them. "Alive and well as you can see."

They growl at John.

Crash the girl is staring at John. She is putting pieces together. I need to move before she exposes my lies.

"The solution is flawed," I announce. I tap my still full glass. "It causes fatal damage in the subject. Your entire operation is useless. Dead people can't smuggle data."

I stand up and point at the bar. "While I was here earlier I thought I might indulge in a little testing of my own. This optic contains your solution. So now do your drinks and therefore you."

They look at my glass, and John's. Still full.

"That's right," I say. "You're going to die. Unless you do what I say, in which case I will call my brother and he will administer the correct solution, as he did to this man, saving his life."

They are staring at john. Horrified beyond words. John looks back blandly. He can do unfazed for England.

"You have time," I say nastily. "It doesn't kill for at least twelve hours. But then you know that, don't you?"

John glances at me with a horrified expression at just the right moment. Did I really do this? Am I a cold blooded killer? I could be. I could easily be. I grin at him. "It's no more than they deserve," I tell him. "All those people. And we can't let them live if they have seen the data."

Guns are cocked, tedious threats are made, but everyone is terrified.

"Shall I call my brother or not?" I ask.

They scowl.

"No need," says Mycroft, appearing at the top of the stairs with two large men in suits who I assume are the latest crop of US agents. "I have the solution here and I am ready to give it in return for certain assurances. Really, Sherlock, such posturing, most unnecessary."

"Necessary to me," I say. "They were failing to understand the human cost."

This is so unlike me that he stares.

It is the first time we have seen each other in months. I know he is reading me: short hair, wounded arm, thin and hard muscled body, tanned and weathered face, tired and emotionally bruised eyes.

I read him too: extreme stress. He goes still when under pressure and now he is as still as a stone. But it is a stone disguising an engine, and the wheels are turning inside.

He is in a lot of trouble. Good.

"What's the plan?" says the first big man, confirming my guess that he is a US agent.

"I want protection for this man," I tell the agents. "I want no one to approach him, threaten him or contact him in any way."

"What makes you think you can negotiate with us?" demands the first agent. "We're not here for you. We're here for what's ours."

"Promise me he will get protection and I will give you what's yours. I found it before your colleagues started blundering about shooting people, and I have it safe elsewhere. Promise me."

They don't want to but they do.

"What's he to you?" they ask.

"A point of principle, that's all," I say. "You just need to do what I tell you."

"Sherlock please," says Mycroft with plausible pleading in his tone. "We should administer the antidote before these people become too sick to give evidence."

"I suppose," I say.

Crash the girl speaks up as Mycroft clicks his fingers and the second agent takes out a box of syringes. "This is bullshit," she says in her cracked voice. "There is no antidote. You're just bluffing. I gave him -"

John turns to her and clutches her in his arms and presses his mouth very firmly onto hers, cutting her off.

I watch as he kisses her for a long moment. "You gave him a very good time, by the look of it," I remark to her.

Crash the elder goes goggle eyed.

"There was a little cross-pollination of ideas," I tell him. "Your daughter is very attractive, apparently, and my friend here is good at extracting information. I wouldn't trust anything she tells you about what happened the night you lost him."

Crash is struggling against John's kiss but luckily it looks like passion.

"Now then," says Mycroft in disgust. "Enough of this. Roll up your sleeves, everyone."

The agents move in to restrain people and injections are given so swiftly that I wonder who Mycroft has been practising on.

Crash the girl gets a jab too and John releases her.

She smacks him in the face, wiping her mouth with her sleeve.

"Nice," says John. "Very classy." He looks smug.

"I never gave you the dangerous stuff," she says.

"Shut up now," I tell her.

John takes a leering step towards her and she gives him the finger just before she slides to the carpet where her father and the heavies are already lying.

"Excellent," I say. "Well, looks like we're all done here."

"Where's our data," demands agent number one.

"At Mycroft's house," I say.

"No it's not," he says. "We searched."

"Yes, and then I arrived, and your colleagues found me and I took them to EHCo. But I had the sample with me and I left it behind after your search was called off. Check your CCTV footage from the house. You'll see I had a bag with me." I know of course that they can't.

"Isn't that right Mycroft?" I confirm. "You have the data at your house."

He sighs. Cursing me I know. "Yes. I have the data."

He looks at them. "Everything will be arranged."

Such a Mycroft turn of phrase. Records will be destroyed and recreated. People's lives will be turned upside down: jobs lost, deaths covered up or lied about, international relations smoothed over with whatever bargaining chips Mycroft has in his endless contingency plans. The data will be returned even though it is now effectively useless as it has been smeared over such a wide area. Perhaps our government will cover the cost of their government developing an alternative. We're already ahead of the game in data smuggling, perhaps we'll help them develop the technology to detect it at their borders.

Endless and dull. Not my concern.

"Let's go," I say to John.

"Where," he says, still looking at Crash the girl.

"Home," I say.

He glances across at me and swallows. Something in the way I spoke has affected him. "Home," he repeats. "OK."


	28. Chapter 28

We get into the Land Rover. It is still only early afternoon. I feel vaguely surprised that it is still light outside after the dim candelabras and high tension inside Midnight.

"Why," says John. "Why the deal for me?" He watches my hands on the steering wheel as I check my mirrors, ready to pull away.

"Because if they think you've got their data in you, you might disappear. I can't have that."

I look at him. His face shows slight disbelief. "Obviously," I add.

He frowns. "Not obvious," he mutters.

I reverse out of the space I am parked in, an inch of clearance either side. One of life's small yet rewarding challenges: the accurate parking of a car. Not a skill I have ever really used in London. "I will still need to deal with Mycroft," I say. "As I have no actual powers to make deals. But I think I just saved his skin, so he should be amenable." I drum my fingers on the wheel and head out into the traffic maelstrom which is east of the City, a world of square roundabouts and glimpses of the Roman wall.

"Well done on shutting up the girl," I say as we begin the slog to Baker Street.

"She was about to give you away," he says.

"It was convincing," I say.

He gives me a funny look. "I do know how to kiss," he says. "Sometimes the other person even enjoys it."

"I don't think that was the case with her," I say. Taking a chance, trying to shatter this tension between us.

"It was not my best work," he says, and we start laughing, and relief floods me and I reach my left hand over and squeeze his arm. I feel his muscles, like my own but different, fleshier, more solid, more to grasp hold of.

I think all this and in the same second he flinches away, the laughter draining off. I take my hand back and drive.

* * *

"She gave me something different," John says. "Crash. There is no antidote. What she gave me meant that I am still alive. She said it herself."

"Yes. She put you the real data into the pen meant for you, not the sample stuff." Deduction only. Mycroft will have to prove this.

"So real data doesn't kill," John says musingly. "Interesting. And when I say I interesting, I mean, how can I get rid of it?"

"I will find out. I promise."

His face says he does not set much store by my promises these days.

My phone buzzes. "Get that for me, would you?" I ask. He reaches into my coat pocket, just like old times. I feel his warm hand against my chest. So self-indulgent of me to ask these favours. But I never could help myself before, so there is no need to stop now.

John reads me the text from Mycroft. _Sloppy work even by your standards. MH_

I snarl. "Text him back," I tell John. "Remind him I have not been myself lately."

* * *

We hide the Land Rover in an unofficial car park where a construction project has ground to a halt. John leads me through back alleys to Baker Street. He points to the CCTV cameras and the angles from which the pedestrians cannot be seen.

"A slightly moot point now," I say, "given that Mycroft knows we are coming here. But it will be useful in future. Thank you." I resist the recurring impulse to touch him as I say this. He has clearly become uncomfortable with it since my return. This is a great shame: one of the few areas of honesty in our relationship, the freedom to touch each other, within the bounds of friendship, as the moment urged. Am I going to have to be distantly polite for the rest of my life?

John hesitates as he lets us into the back door of Baker Street. "There is something I should mention."

"What?" I tense completely. My mind floods with possibilities.

"I've got a lodger. To help pay the rent." His eyes are dark and intense, holding many meanings.

"Oh." Sinking feeling. Who is he? Sleeping in my room. Where is my stuff? Has John ditched it all when he replaced me? I look at John closely as we stand in Mrs Hudson's hallway.

It is not a man, I realise. The signs tell me not. I feel better immediately. No, it is a girl, and John tolerates her, but she is purely practical. Good. Fine. But annoying.

"She probably won't be in," John says, "but just to warn you."

He hesitates.

"It's fine," I lie. "I'll crash in your room. Or on the sofa," I add, realising that the first suggestion might not be welcome.

"You can't crash in my room," John says, and he is embarrassed.

"OK, no problem."

"I mean, because Priya, the lodger, she's got my room."

For a moment I am confused. They are both in his room? Makes no sense. "Well, where do you sleep?" Surely I have not misread this, are they sleeping ... together?

John quirks his mouth as he unlocks our front door. "Your room."

He flings back the door and ushers me in. I step into our living room for the first time since disappearing, my stomach churning.

All my things, still here. The flat is untidy, but not to the level I remember. Books untouched on shelves, leaning against one another. Fridge door looks very clean. Carpet is visible and has been hoovered.

I look at John and he nods. "Go ahead."

I open the door to my bedroom and see... a strange hybrid of myself and John. My books, clothes, papers, are more or less where I left them. Clothes have been shoved up in the wardrobe to make room for his: books are stacked on the floor. That's it really . The bed is unmade, of course: he got up out of it to investigate intruders in the flat, and has not been back in it since.

I feel a stab of sentiment when I see my things again. It is not the objects themselves, but their associations, of happy times here in the flat.

I fall back onto the bed and close my eyes. Open them, gaze up at the familiar ceiling, feel peculiar. The pillow smells of John's hair.

He is standing, staring outraged at me as if I have just obliterated him from the room with my mere presence. His bed now. Of course.

I sit up. "I'll sleep on the sofa, obviously," I say. "This is your room now."

"No," he says, "it's fine. I'll have the sofa."

"No."

"You've been on the run for months. Sleep in your own bed. While you have the chance."

He knows, then. Knows that I can't stay here.

We go back out into the living room and he makes tea in mugs I've never seen before. "Have a look on the windowsill," he calls.

I approach and see my violin case. My breath disappears and I pick up the instrument like a baby.

"Play if you want," says John. "They'll think it's a CD."

I shake my head, but run my hands over the body of the violin. Stupid I know, but I have missed it, missed the expression it gives me, missed it like a part of myself. It is the voice I have when I am under Mycroft's watch, and it is dear to me for that.

"Have a shower after this," suggests John coming in with tea. "Get your own clothes on, chill out. You must be shattered."

"Yes."

I lay down the violin, resisting the urge to caress it. I am all self denial now I am back. Sadly.

I drink some tea. Being here still doesn't feel like it used to.

Has too much happened for me ever to truly return?

Then John speaks.

"I missed this," he says, frowning at his mug. "Just this. Us, here, having a cup of tea."

He darts a look at me. For a second I see it, the level look of friendship and trust that I have longed for so desperately while I was gone. Then his eyes are turned away, towards the hot tea.

"So did I," I said, gazing at him, my heart in my face, but he does not look up again.

Perhaps we must keep saying this, repeating ourselves, until things are right between us again. This much I can be honest about.

We sit drinking tea without eye contact, the tension easing in the room. It does feel like home after all. I relax.

After a while I get up and have a shower, and because there are no more tasks for the moment, and I am at home in my own shower, and no one knows I am here, I stand under the shower head with warm water trickling all over my body, and lean my head against the cool tiled wall and focus on the sensations of warmth and moisture and tingle over every part of me, and seek comfort in my own touch, and allow myself, in those final whiteout moments, to think of nothing at all.

Afterwards I feel better and get dressed in my own clothes and stand in my room watching myself in the mirror. My eyes look weary. All the secrets. That will fade, the sense of carrying a burden. After a while it will be normal. It is like the only time I have ever worn nail varnish: at first it feels as though your fingers are weighted down, not your own, but after a short time they give and flex and you have adjusted to the extra weight and can carry on.


	29. Chapter 29

"John... You know I can't stay. I'm dead. I have to stay dead for everyone's sake."

We are in the living room, the only light that of the laptop on which I have been absorbing all the information I have missed over the last six months. I have now abandoned that, and am sprawled in my chair, feeling exhaustion creep over me as it does at the end of a case, and watching John.

John is in his chair, feet stretched out in front of him. He has been pretending to watch television while I work but is actually watching me too.

"I don't know whether to be pleased you care, or pissed off that you're still going to leave me again."

"I'm sorry, John. But I have to do this. I had to before, and I have to again."

"Why do you need to stay dead, Sherlock? You've found the void left by Moriarty. Found it, sorted it. Where's the threat?"

I fix my eyes on the ceiling. The threat is here, in my heart, in my fear of being myself again. All that time longing to be here, with John, being me, and now it is real and all I want is to run. Being me is proving more complicated than I remembered. I have compromised myself emotionally and I need more time to adjust. I need to stop feeling things as I have allowed myself to feel them, and to see, once again, only the bare facts of a situation.

Bare fact here: John, looking at me with an expression of frustration. Me, avoiding his gaze because I am afraid, afraid of seeing how I am hurting him, of hurting myself. The flat, full of unhappiness again.

"I must," I say to John in a low voice. "I'm sorry. And I won't be out of contact. I will stay in touch. I promise."

I reach my hand out as if to touch his, but cease the movement halfway across, letting him know that I would not really cross that line. All the things I have never said, still only in my mind. I should say them now before I go. But he looks so weary, and I am so nervous about saying something which will make it worse, not better, that I cannot.

I am a coward.

I hesitate, then say, "I will stay. Tonight. Go tomorrow. I need to rest, anyway. But I must go."

He sighs. "I don't understand why you think you have to go," he says. "But Ok. Do what you've got to do." He shrugs, gets up, and goes upstairs to bed. I retreat to my room.

* * *

The flat is dark. I have waited for John to be truly asleep upstairs. I told him that I would not go until tomorrow and again I have lied. It is nearly four, a good hour for black deeds and misdemeanours. And I know that this is a black deed. My worst. But at least this time I had the chance to tell John, say goodbye.

I button my coat and wind on my scarf while still in my room. Once that bedroom door opens there will be no time to pause.

I have memorised the path to the front door and can do it in pitch blackness. There are no obstacles. Six steps out of the kitchen, and I will be out.

I breathe the air of Baker Street, of me and John, for the last time. I already know the sadness which is coming. But I must not think of that now.

I move silently into the living room. Six steps to the door. One, two, three, four-

A dark figure rises from the ground and fastens its hands around my throat. I sink like a stone, no sound, no time to cry out to John, no time to do anything but die.


	30. Chapter 30

I open my eyes as the pressure eases on my windpipe. The lights are on, bright in my face, and vision is blurry, but I can breathe, and I smell John or rather, John's aftershave, close by.

It takes a moment.

"You bastard," John says calmly, his hands still pinning me to the floor with a strength which comes from years of hard training. "You really were going to sneak off in the night and leave us all again."

"John - let me go." My voice squeaks. I struggle to sit up but John increases pressure on my chest and I stop fighting.

"Why did you do it? You knew I didn't want you to go."

I have heard John upset before. I have heard him outraged, even tearful. But I have never heard him this angry.

"I'm sorry." It is all I can say. "I knew you would try to stop me. But John, I must -"

John abruptly lets go and springs to his feet. "Oh, yes, _you must_. You, you, you. What about me? What do you think _I_ must? Oh, no, wait, that would never occur to you because I am just a bear of very little brain who occasionally steps in to try to save your wretched life!"

He turns his head away. saying bitterly, "Tell me, Sherlock, doesn't our friendship mean anything to you?"

I rise slowly, massaging my neck. "John," I say in a low voice. "Our... friendship. It means _everything_ to me. It sustained me when I was alone on a Welsh hillside. It comforted me when I thought I was dying of a botched gene therapy. It gave me strength to get out onto that roof. Our friendship, John, is all I have. And you must know how I treasure it."

John turns back and gives me a look which I cannot read. Is it fury - or sorrow?

I suck air into my lungs, feeling my heart racing in my chest, and close my eyes. There are tears waiting under my eyelashes. "I'm sorry," I repeat.

John takes two steps across the living room and grasps my shoulders. "You stupid, stupid idiot."

My eyes fly open.

"Yeah, bet you don't get called that very often. But right now, you're the stupidest person in this room, possibly in this street. I'm not trying to stop you leaving, Sherlock." John punches me gently on the shoulder. "I'm making sure you don't leave alone."


	31. Chapter 31

John can feel Sherlock struggling in his arms but won't let him go without a promise not to bolt straight from the flat and away to God knows where.

"You want to come with me," Sherlock says. He seems stunned.

"I want you to just stay here and realise that vanishing is not going to fix anything. But if you have to go, then I have to go with you." John shrugs. Simple as that.

Sherlock tries again to free himself but John is stronger than he lets on. Sherlock is wiry and tough but he is at a disadvantage and he is not as angry as John, not as furious and horrified and desperate. He has no chance.

"Let go of me," Sherlock complains. He writhes in John's arms. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Yeah, you said that last night."

Sherlock subsides. "It's not practical to hide two people," he says sulkily. "And we are friends, John, famously friends. No one would believe that it was a coincidence. They would think –"

He stops.

"They would know we were together," he says.

"So what," says John. "So we both want to disappear."

"Nobody would believe we were both dead."

"Why not? Maybe I topped myself as well."

Sherlock frowns in distress.

"Oh, right. So it's ok for you to put your friends through your funeral, but the idea of me doing it is just beyond the pale. God, Sherlock, you are unbelievable sometimes." John's fingers are digging into Sherlock's arm. He knows it is hurting Sherlock but doesn't stop.

"Let go of me."

"No."

"You wouldn't do it anyway," Sherlock says then. "Kill yourself."

"You have no idea," John says. "You have no clue what happened with me, with Mrs Hudson, with anybody, while you were away. We're different now, Sherlock. Thanks to you, we're all different. Mrs Hudson looks older, greyer, sadder. You were like a son to her, she loved you."

His voice makes a squeak. He shakes his head and clears his throat. "You sent her to your funeral. She sobbed all the way there and back and pretty much all through it as well. We stayed up all night that night and I fed her scotch until she basically passed out. Me too. Did you give that a thought? And what about your brother?"

"He knew."

"No, he didn't." John is outraged. More excuses for Sherlock doing basically whatever the hell he pleases.

"He suspected."

"Maybe. Your brother, Sherlock. He's all you've got. You're all he's got. I know you're not best buddies but a funeral isn't something you do to your worst enemy." John gives Sherlock a shake of anger and frustration.

"Yes, it is. It's exactly what you do to your worst enemy."

"Is he your worst enemy?" demands John.

Silence.

John takes a long breath. "Right. I'm guessing that Molly Hooper knew. She's the obvious choice and she has avoided me like the plague for the last year. She helped you do it. I hate her too, by the way."

He manages to say it casually but some of the rage comes through and Sherlock's head snaps up. "It wasn't her fault. I made her do it!"

"Right. With your magnetic personality and the fact that she's in love with you." John is bitter. Sherlock was fast to spot Molly's infatuation. Not so quick to notice anything closer to home even here, even now.

"She's not in love with me. She's stronger than that. I told her so." Sherlock speaks with injured dignity.

Stab of pain and jealousy and bitterness and just plain hurt. "Oh, you had a nice heart-to-heart with her as you let her in on the secret that was about to destroy the people who loved you. Right. Nice touch. You never thought to leave a pick-me-up note for anyone else, a little pep talk to help us through the hard times?"

"John, I've said sorry. I am sorry. It was necessary."

"Maybe. You've given me some story about ridding the country of Moriarty's men and how they were going to hurt me and the others. And then you didn't come back. Then it was finding the person who was going to take Moriarty's place in the criminal hieracrchy, if there is actually such a thing. You've done that. But you haven't come back, have you? Are you ever going to?"

Low voice. "I don't know."

"Right. Great."

"You're so angry." Sherlock's expression is like a child's, wondering.

"Well done."

"I knew you would be. But I also knew that you would forgive me, eventually." Sherlock speaks this flatly.

"Yes, if you came back. Which you patently haven't." John grips Sherlock even more tightly, the muscles in his arms straining.

Sherlock could probably lift John off his feet and escape that way, if he tried. He must have thought of it. But he doesn't move. He just stands. John clamps Sherlock's arms to his sides, looking up at Sherlock in some parody of a lover's embrace, an embrace in which one person is far too angry to care if he is leaving bruises all down the arms of the other person, or how it looks that he won't, can't let go. Where tenderness and care have been replaced with anger and hurt and terror at the idea of losing Sherlock again and just longing for him to be how he was before, strong and powerful and so certain, not this awful lost person who has come back, this shadow with short hair who doubts himself and fears his own home and who does not even sound like Sherlock, who is not even really fighting being held, who does not seem like Sherlock and that is what is really so wrong with this whole thing, that Sherlock, the one who came back, is not John's Sherlock, the one he loved.

John lets go and steps away, rubbing his face.

Too much.

"You arse," he says, but he is so tired that he cannot be bothered making it sound angry. "Stay. For pity's sake, just stay and let's go back to how things were and you how you were."

He has said something significant, he sees at once. Something has caught Sherlock's attention. The look is there, the laser look, calculating. Thank god.

"How I was," Sherlock says. His eyes flicker and dart away to either side.

"Yes. You were, you were always -"

John swallows and tries to form a sentence without using any of the words which present themselves. Amazing. Extraordinary. Mine.

Sod it.

"I loved you," John says. Sherlock's eyes widen. "The way you were," says John. He takes a big breath for the difficult part. "And I'm not sure I can still love you the way you've come back. -But I don't think you care about that, do you."

He has said it. He assumes Sherlock knows what he means when he talks about love. He does not mean hero worship, does not mean, as a friend,although both those things are also true. He means the kind of love that rises up in jealous rage at mention of any others, that is prepared to do anything, promise anything, be anything, as he has for years been the person Sherlock seemed to want him to be. The kind of love that will not stand exclusion.

Sherlock frowns, a painful frown. "I," he says.

"Yeah, you're not the only one who gets to spring surprises." John speaks bitterly, but the tension is draining from him now and he sighs, softens a little. "What is it, what's the matter?"

And he is amazed and horrified to see tears form in Sherlock's eyes, and hear him whisper as he turns away, "I can't."


	32. Sherlock and John, London, August

We do what people do. Put the kettle on and make tea. An act which is more about the ritual, the pause, the chance to reset the situation, than about the resultant hot drink.

Neither of us really drink tea. After the kettle has clicked off, John looks at me, and then gets the jar of instant coffee down from the cupboard. I nod.

I sit on the living room floor with my back against the settee. John brings the drinks and sits beside me, a couple of feet away. I hold my mug, sip, and convince myself that the racing heartbeat is the consequence of this bitter black liquid. John is holding his mug against his lips, not drinking, just clasping the hot cup to him.

We let the silence go on until there is calm in the room again. A long time. And then I lean back my head against the settee, not really comfortable but it will do, and close my eyes. John is watching me. I know that he will stay awake, suspicious of more lies. And this is comforting. He cares enough to stop me. I always thought he did, but this, unasked for, is proof.

"Thank you," I murmur without opening my eyes.

He grunts.

I sleep. He watches. And nobody leaves.

* * *

August. London is bent under the weight of a humid heat we have not experienced for thirty years. The Tube is unbearable. Bus seats are damp with other people's sweat. Every fountain in town is a magnet for topless men and empty beer cans. And with doors and windows left open by a population desperate to get fresh air into the house, criminals are having a festival of theft.

"Nothing interesting though." I am at the table in the living room, beside my own open window, the day's papers spread out before me. We have been indoors all day, sheltering from the heat. At last, as evening draws in, a slight breeze is entering Baker Street. "Unless the National Gallery leaves the back door unlocked, we're in for another tedious day."

John says, "Hah," and puts my coffee down on top of tonight's Standard.

He is standing close to my chair. His hand comes into my line of vision and taps the newspaper, an article I have already seen, about surveillance using subcutaneous tracking devices.

He says something about the device and my arm, but I am transfixed by his hand. Square fingers, fine hairs on the back of his hand, very short fingernails, neat half moon in his thumbnail.

I pick his hand up and move it off my paper. An unconscious touch. Like we always used to. Weeks and months have brought us back, more or less, to where we were before. There are still silences and still many things we do not say – but that is little different, either.

John still hovers. "Let me take a look."

"What?"

"The arm." He touches his own bicep in explanation.

I roll my eyes and unbutton my left shirt cuff. John turns back the fabric and I feel the dab of his fingertips on my skin.

"Hmmn," he says, rubbing his fingers over what was the wound. "God you botched this."

"Did I? I thought I did rather well."

"Only in that you didn't kill yourself or end up with an infection, so, yeah, pretty good by eighteenth century medical standards, yes."

"Redo it for me then. Make it neat. Make a different shaped scar."

He ponders that. Rolls my sleeve down, warm hands, and buttons the cuff for me.

I wait.

"Your scars are your own," he says at last. He is still holding my wrist.

For a dizzying moment, I imagine that he is going to press my wrist to his lips, kiss it, then place his mouth under the cuff and kiss there, his eyes on mine, dark and meaningful. This is one difference: now I have these visions, of John, and me. But I am keeping my promise to myself. I will not involve myself with John. Even if I am now thinking of his mouth on my skin.

I start to blush and have to freeze so as not to draw his attention to it.

He does not kiss me. Of course not.

He does something even more extraordinary.

He draws circles on the inside of my wrist with his thumb, staring down as he does it, watching his thumb caress me.

I know I am staring too. I turn my head to look at him but he is fixed on my wrist, thumb exerting a little pressure, dragging on the fine skin, rubbing over the tendons and the map of blue veins.

Heat shoots through every part of me.

He finished buttoning my cuff ages ago.

Then he stops. Looks at me. I am flushed, breathing shallowly. He turns back to my wrist and rubs again before sliding his thumb deliberately under my shirt cuff. He wraps his fingers right around my wrist and rests there.

When I look at his face again his eyes are closed. His lips are pressed tightly together too.

"John?"

He shakes his head.

I cannot bear not to understand what is happening. I touch his wrist, burning hot, then place my right hand on his left cheek. He makes a noise like a laugh or sob, eyes still closes. His lips smile but it seems like pain.

His cheek is rough. "Please tell me what's wrong," I say.

His eyes open. "You never say please."

This is untrue. I cannot be bothered to prove it now though. "What's wrong," I repeat, without the please.

"You," he says, and his voice falls away. "Since you came back. You're all wrong...not wrong. Different."

He grips my wrist hard. "Not bad," he adds. "It's not a criticism. It's just hard to deal with. That's all."

None of this makes sense but his fingers are still on me and he has not flinched from my hand on his cheek.

I flex my fingers, stretch them a bit into the hair at his temple. He closes his eyes again.

"Sherlock," he says, a sigh. Of course: John never made any promises. And, remembering his declaration in May, quite the reverse.

"Look at me," I tell him, drawing my hand away.

He does. I cover his left hand with my right, on my left wrist. Squeeze. He squeezes too. We remain there slightly contorted like this, looking into each other's eyes, holding hard onto each other, as things fall into place.

I know, at this moment, that I will kiss him. Not immediately but I will.

I know fully and completely that I will undress him and make love to him and use myself up in showing him that I understand the euphemism and the difference between it and sex.

I know that he is thinking about taking me to bed, too. His face is warm, his eyes have a soft smile to them, and he is breathing through his mouth.

I know that this is not what I missed about him when I was gone. We did not have this, before.

I must tell him.

"Friendship," I say. "Friendship first, foremost, between us."

He tilts his head.

"I didn't love you for the sex," I add. "I loved you for yourself. For myself. Us."

God, this is why I am so inexperienced in these areas. It is because I am so bad at it.

John smiles. "I never thought it was about the sex," he says. "Given that we weren't having any. But it is very nice to know you loved me at all."

I am dumbfounded. "Of course I did!" I exclaim, offended as much as anything. "How can you not know that?"

He grabs my arms as I move to fling myself away in a fit of hurt and anger. "Maybe because I didn't understand all the ways you were telling me," he says, and lifts me to my feet and slides his arms around my waist. He lays his head on my shoulder, butting the right side of my chin, and says, "I never told you either. Until. " He shrugs against me. Until I came back. "-Did you know?"

"No," I admit. "Not until."

He nods, his face in my shirt. "Then this is lucky," he says, mumbling. "And we should probably treat it very cautiously."

He lifts his head. Looks at me with bold eyes, smiling: looking like John again. "Do you do cautious?" he asks with a grin.

I have one hand on the back of his neck and the other in the dip of his spine. "I do very cautious," I say. "Probably. I don't know. But that's my intention."

"Good."

"Good."

I let him go and walk to the window. The talking has dissipated the tension, although I can feel my breathing and heart rate are all over the place. "Dinner," I suggest.

"Ok," he says.

We get our keys and phones, and shut the window. We'll eat out – I know a place – and chat about everyday things, and save the rest for later. There is time.

But –

"I'll see you downstairs," I tell him, stepping back into the flat. "Forgot something." He nods and clatters down the stairs.

I stand by the window with one hand on my violin, and take steady breaths. John. But it will be all right. We can do this and it will not break me, or him, or us.

I realise that I am crying again, without shame, as I did on the Welsh hillside where I first learned to live in my body. But here, now, with John close by and the promise of a greater adventure ahead, I realise that I am also smiling.

The End

* * *

**Author's note**: that's it for this story. I hope you liked it. There may be more of this Sherlock as he's one of my favourites. Also slightly BAMF John. So we will see. Sef


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